Proof of Life
by MidnightRun42
Summary: A story in which three children adapt to the chaos and tragedy of their own lives by visiting chaos and tragedy on the lives of others. OR: How the Kokuyo Gang eventually became the Kokuyo Gang and what happened next. (Eventual 6927 & 4914)
1. The Killing Type

**NOTE:** Since I've been asked this a couple of times, I figured I should put in a quick note to preface. This isn't really an AU story in the traditional sense as it (generally) fully incorporates the events and information given by the manga (and in some cases the novels, audio, data books, and occasionally the anime). So, think of it less as an AU and more as an incredibly liberal canon expansion. Also, SPOILERS. Spoilers, spoilers everywhere for everything all the time. And now you know and knowing is half the battle. :)

**-ooo-**

"_A boy is a dangerous animal."_  
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

CACCIATORE  
NORTHERN ITALY  
1998

The Cacciatore Family was known as one of the most fierce of the new Famiglia in Northern Italy. They rose to become one of the greater powers in the region during the years following the collapse of the Esterneo Famiglia and, though they were relatively new, they grew quickly in influence and notoriety due to the guidance of Matteo Salvatore. They weren't anywhere near the same level as Vongola or even Giglio Nero, but Matteo's boys worked hard and they were gaining ground every day. Northern Italy was a competitive area, always had been, so it was no surprise that Famiglia rose and fell in status rapidly and often with little warning. But the Cacciatore Family had been fortunate in many ways. Their land was uncontested, they'd become allies with several neighboring Famiglia and they had several extraordinary fighters which helped keep enemies from their door.

If asked, Matteo attributed his family's rise in power and position to his policy of bringing fresh blood into the family whenever the opportunity presented itself. He'd been a orphan himself, after all, so he knew that talent and potential came from the strangest places. He watched the little urchins who ran their errands and did odd jobs for them, always on the look out for unusually bright children that he could bring into their family. He'd never gotten around to having children of his own, so instead he adopted them. Gave homes to the best and brightest of the orphans that populated the streets of the cities he visited. Over the years he'd adopted over forty children into the family and it was the addition of these smart, strong, lively kids that had made his family great. Something he was incredibly proud to be a part of and he had no doubt that by the time he groomed the strongest and the best of them to take his place, the family would only continue to flourish and grow under his guidance.

Of all his children, Lancia had been his favorite ever since the day they met on the streets of Lucca. Matteo had been in town that day to meet with Girolamo, the new head of the Volpe family, to discuss the problems special bullet technology were causing their respective families. Their families had never been close allies, but they were neighbors of a sort and neither had ever bothered to branch out into tech development when it so much simpler to rely upon their own skills and more traditional weapons. As the world changed though and the use of will and flames became more and more prevalent in battle, they'd each begun adopting the use of rings to focus their will and flames in recent years. Of course, that was before Vongola started created and began using bullets to further augment and enhance themselves. Many families, always hungry for greater power and a larger slice of the pie, had immediately began acquiring specialists to reverse engineer Vongola's success or to develop their own versions of the technology. Most failed and their families collapsed after pouring too much money and effort into such foolhardy endeavors. Some few, however, seemed to be seeing at least some degree of success in recent months and that was... terrifying. It had been bad enough when that development had been limited to will enhancement such as the Vongola used, but there had been rumors running rampant through their information network that Esterneo, the most powerful family in the North to enter into this small-scale arms race, had begun successful production of their own bullets. Bullets that, rather than enhancing a man's will or augmenting his skills, could steal another man's will, his powers, his body and soul. The very thought of the existence of such a weapon chilled Matteo to the bone. Particularly if that weapon were in the hands of the Esterneo Famiglia, who had always been a dangerous and unforgiving enemy to have even in the very best of circumstances.

Girolamo, who had been a young Boss with an impressive mustache and an even more impressive waistline, had scoffed at the very idea of the existence of such a weapon. He sipped his coffee and leaned back in his chair, balancing it dangerously on two legs, as he he took another long pull from the cigarillo in his hand. "You can not honestly tell me you believe such things, Matteo. These stories that paint Esterneo as bogeymen come to steal souls in the night? This is the sort of tale I'd expect to hear from superstitious old women or from my children, who would find such monster stories enthralling, the bloodthirsty little bastards. Certainly not from a man of reason such as yourself, Matteo. These are nothing more than rumors, meant to intimidate and cover the failures of those fools who don't want to admit they've failed just like all the rest. They have always been a proud Famiglia and one who would not admit fault of failure easily. I do not find it surprising that they would go to such ridiculous lengths to conceal their weakness from the world."

The meeting had ended shortly thereafter with Girolamo still chuckling like an hyperactive hyena at the idea of what he had decided to call 'oogey boogie' bullets. Matteo didn't entirely blame him for his skepticism, after all, he himself thought that there was probably little chance that it was true. Still... he had lived a long life and he could remember a time when rings such as the Boss ring he wore on the third finger of his right hand had seemed just as unlikely.

It was when he was leaving this disappointing and fruitless meeting that he met Lancia, when the grubby little thief tried to steal his wallet with the damn sloppiest lift he'd ever seen in his life. So sloppy was it that he'd had plenty of time, as the boy attempted his escape, to reach out and snag the kid by the collar of his shirt, hauling him back and shoving him against the alley wall. He raised an eyebrow at the kid's almost comedic look of utter surprise and held out his hand with a sigh, "Give it back, kid."

He'd expected a flat denial or false anger or a round of inventive cursing or maybe even a fight, but what he got instead was a lopsided, gap-toothed grin and his wallet slapped down good-naturedly into his palm. "Sorry, I just wanted to know if I'd be any good at it."

He'd snorted, tucking the wallet away and dropping the kid back to the pavement, "Don't worry, kid, you're not. Maybe you should find another line of work."

That grin had just widened further as the kid scrubbed a hand through his mess of dark hair, "Then maybe you should give me a job, yeah?"

It had been ten years since he had decided to adopt that child into his family. Many things had happened since that day, many things had changed in his life and the life of his Famiglia, mostly for the better. The Esterneo Famiglia was long gone, just another victim of their own hubris. They'd faded into obscurity, marshaled there by the collective disdain of the mafia for their underhanded tactics. In the years since their terrifying possession bullet had been banned, Esterneo had shut their doors and presumably left Italy for less hostile climes. The Volpe Famiglia was gone as well, having wiped themselves and most of the smaller neighboring Famiglia out in a fit of paranoia months ago. Matteo and his Famiglia had been far more fortunate than most. His family had grown and flourished in the years since that day, nearly tripling in both size and influence simply by working hard and steering clear of the more problematic and volatile Famiglia. Of course, it also didn't hurt that they had the advantage of having the strongest man in Northern Italy as a bodyguard.

Cheerful, good-natured Lancia had grown fierce and strong in the years since that day they met on the streets of Lucca. From almost the first moment he'd brought him home, Lancia had been enthusiastic and driven to learn everything he could to protect and strengthen the family that had taken him in. He had worked harder than any of Matteo's other boys and, though he still bore the scars a childhood spent on the streets, he'd become a man who could laugh easily through those old pains. A man who knew great sorrow and great joy, but chose to focus on the present and the joy his family gave him. It made him strong, stronger than anyone. People who threatened their family called him fearsome, which was understandable as Lancia was an absolute terror in battle when he was fighting for the family he loved, but Matteo still thought of Lancia as the most gentle child in the family. He was exceptionally proud of all his boys, but Lancia... Lancia was special.

Whenever his business took him to Lucca, he always made a point of stopping to have lunch at the café he'd been leaving when they first met. It wasn't that he expected lightening to strike twice exactly. He adopted plenty of children before Lancia and plenty since and he was fond of them all, but he still found himself gong back to that café repeatedly over the years. Whatever the reason, though his schedule and the requirements of his work changed often over the years, this was the one habit he never managed to break. It was the sort of habit most people might not have even noticed, for he only visited Lucca on o few times a year and never on any sort of set schedule. However, it still made him predictable in a way and that was a dangerous thing to be when you were a boss.

Matteo met his doom in that little café in the walled city of Lucca on a sunny day the year Lancia turned nineteen.

The boy was small, whip-thin and had the same lean hungry look so many boys who survived in the cracks of life did. His clothes were too large for him and clearly second-hand, but his dark hair was neat and tidy, a memorable contradiction. He came up to their table in that café and he seemed nervous, his eyes darting around the place like he was searching for something even though his destination was clear. That alone was enough to put his bodyguards on edge. But he'd seen boys like this before and he knew well enough that there was much to be gained from giving such a child a chance. "What is it, boy? You look like someone with something to say."

"Pardon my intrusion, but there are men outside with guns," the boy murmured, his eyes on the window now, wide and terrified. "That's them."

His men leapt into action immediately, in motion even before the crash of glass and the deafening explosion of gunfire that came with it. He was pinned to the floor behind his overturned table in moments and he could here one of his guards leaping into the fray with the sword he carried held out before him. A glance to the side revealed the boy huddled down on the floor, blood running down his cheek from where something, probably some flying glass, had cut him.

Soon enough the action was over the men who had attacked them were dead and his guards were busy apologizing and handing out cash to the café's owners for the trouble. Matteo sat up and found that the boy was already stumbling to his feet as well. His pale thin face stained with the blood that was still dripping slowly from the cut on his cheek. He glanced at Matteo and gave him a thin smile before scrambling away towards the door. He paused on his way out by the body of a man who'd died during the first burst of gunfire and frisked him quickly, pocketing the man's wallet. The boy was good-hearted, clearly, to have taken the time to warn them, but he wasn't a saint.

**-ooo-**

He ran into the boy again a few days later quite by accident. In a market near the edge of town, he'd stopped to pick up a new packet of cigarettes and found the boy looking surly as the store owner threatened to call the authorities over a few nearly stolen apples. Matteo stopped the owner with a glance and dropped several coins on the counter, more than enough to pay for the boy's apples. The owner grumbled, but he shoved the apples into a bag and practically threw them at the boy with a warning that he'd better not see the him in his store again.

"Why did you help me?" The boy asked, clutching his bag as they stepped out into the road together. His shoulders were tight, his expression caught somewhere between angry and confused.

"Just returning a favor," Matteo replied, ripping the paper and tapping a cigarette out of the pack. "For your trouble the other day. I always pay my debts."

The boy nodded, he might not have accepted kindness, but he could easily accept the idea of a debt repaid. Matteo smiled sadly. The boy reminded him so much of himself when he was young. Of Lancia and all the rest of the children he'd known over the years. "How would you like to do a job for me, boy? I need someone smart who doesn't ask questions. It pays well. Well enough that you'll be able to buy your food for a while instead of stealing it."

The boy hesitated, his eyes darting furtively around as if looking for a sign that this was some sort of trick. Eventually his gaze settled back on Matteo's face, "What kind of job?"

"Pick up and delivery. Someone will give you an address, you'll go there and pick up a package and then deliver it somewhere else."

"I don't see why that would take someone smart. Anyone could do that much."

The boy was so much like him that he ached to see it, "Yes, but this package is very important and some people might want to take it from you. You'll need to be clever if you mean to evade them and avoid attracting the notice of the authorities."

"I guess. It pays up front?"

"Half up front, half upon completion."

"All right," the boy replied, rolling his shoulders and standing a little straighter. "You want me to go somewhere now?"

"No. Take this," Matteo handed the boy a cheap mobile phone. It was his own, but the kid would be impossible to find again if they didn't have a way to contact him. "Someone will call you soon. Don't lose that. Don't sell it."

The boy took the mobile phone gingerly, putting the bag of apples under his arm so he could hold the phone carefully as if it were far more valuable than it actually was. As if it were something special. Matteo smiled, reaching out to pat the boy's hair on a whim. He noticed for the first time that the boy's hair was long, pulled back in a chipped and worn clip, the ends splayed out behind his head. His mother had worn her hair in a similar fashion, as least he thought she had. She had died when it was very young, so he remembered very little about her. He'd seen pictures of her though and sometimes he dreamed of her standing over him with her hair swept back and a kind smile on her face. He patted the boy's head again, absently, before turning back towards where his car and his boys were waiting. "Don't forget to answer the phone, boy."

**-ooo-**

The boy was as good as he had hoped. He was resourceful, clever and quick. He was prickly and prone to mood swings, but he was sharp and he got the job done. Apparently, he even had a wicked sense of humor once he let down his guard a bit. Marco and Bruce, in particular, had really taken a shine to the kid and begun showing him some rudimentary self-defense and teaching him how to dismantle and shoot the guns they carried with them. He was bright and eager to learn anything that they would teach him and it wasn't long before he became a favorite and whenever there was a call for a runner he was typically the one to get the call. And, for a while, everything was good.

Then, in late April about two months after he started, the boy was late for work and when he finally did show up for his pick-up it was with a limp and busted lip. He played it off and the men laughed with him and he got the job done and no one would have thought another thing about it. Life on the streets of Lucca weren't a picnic, after all, so it wasn't strange for a kid to get in a scuffle or two. Soon enough his injuries healed and everything went back to normal.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the last such incident. Every few weeks, that boy would show up for work with a new injury and when Marco or Bruce or one of the others asked him about it he'd always had some story at the ready. The stories seemed always to straddle the line between possible and unrealistic as all real stories often do. So, for a little while, they'd been a little concerned that he might be a bit more of a troublemaker than they'd realized, but they'd believed him. The kid was an excellent liar, after all, most of the kids that haunted Lucca's streets were for good or ill, but even the best liar couldn't maintain the lie forever. Eventually, Marco got worried enough that he followed the kid home one day after his drop-off.

As it turned out, the boy was not the orphan Matteo had originally assumed. Though he might have been better off if he was. The place he called home wasn't anything close to clean or safe. The mother was strung out and seemed to spend the majority of her time passed out on the couch or out searching for a fix. The father was a red-faced mountain of a man who worked hard all day and drank too much at night and had little patience for his son. Marco had seen the boy backhanded when he walked into the house a few nights later and that's all he'd needed to see. They didn't stand for that bullshit, after all, not in the Cacciatore Famiglia. So, Marco did as he'd been told to do if the situation escalated and called the main house immediately. Matteo had decided to go and have a look at the boy's situation himself the next time he was in town.

As it happened, he had arrived at the boy's home two nights later to find the boy bruised, bloody, his arms hanging limp at his sides. It was difficult to tell how much of the blood that covered him was from his own wounds and how much was from the wounds of his father. His mother was standing at the edge of the room screaming at the boy, incoherent words of rage that didn't seem to touch him as he knelt in his father's blood. Just 'look what you've done' over and over again. The boy's father was missing half his head courtesy, Matteo assumed, of the shotgun lying beside the boy. Matteo stepped carefully into the house, deciding then and there that this boy would join their family. That he would bring this boy to the home. Where he would have a true family that would look out for him and keep him safe from casual monsters like these people. "Come with me now, boy." He encouraged, guiding the boy to his feet and leading him out of the house. "Guy, please see that this is taken care of."

Guy nodded resolutely, already pulling on his gloves and stepping towards the house and the screaming woman inside. He'd seen the boy's bruises and he had no sympathy to spare for any dirtbag who let shit like that happen to little kids. None of them did.

Matteo guided the boy into the car, pressing him down into the seat. "We'll have you home and safe soon, Mukuro. Just sit tight."

Mukuro nodded vaguely like he wasn't really hearing anything Matteo said. He seemed a mere shadow of the gutsy kid he'd met in the café all those months ago. His dark gaze was unfocused and lost and Matteo wondered how long it would take the boy to recover from this night.

**-ooo-**

Matteo had seen and done plenty of things in his life, ugly and terrible things, but few enough of those things had prepared him for caring for a hostile, traumatized child he barely knew. The other kids who had been brought in and brought up in the family had been easy by comparison for he'd met them either before or well after the most traumatic moments of their lives. He wanted to help the kid, but he simply wasn't sure how to manage it. So, when the kid asked to be left to alone, Matteo made sure everyone got the message and gave the kid some space. The boy had been through a lot, it seemed only fair to give him some space and time to come to terms with what he'd done and all the changes in his life.

So, Mukuro kept to himself during those early days. He appeared only briefly from time to time and at odd hours to steal food from the pantry. Food that he squirreled away who the hell knew where because he was pretty sure the kid wasn't eating most of it. He'd take the strangest things too. Tomatoes and peppermints, onions and dry pasta noodles (what the hell did the kid even think he was going to do with those?), bottles of water, cans of soda and handfuls of chocolate all disappeared from the pantry at an alarming rate.

When even the blankets and pillows began to disappear from rooms around the house, Matteo began to suspect the kid had found some secret way out of the house and was actually building himself some sort of damn deluxe disaster shelter somewhere out on the grounds.

It was the better part of a week before he finally managed to coax the kid out of his room long enough to meet the rest of the family. When he did, Mukuro had been quiet and serious beside him. He greeted everyone politely enough, but didn't seem to know what to do with the boisterous acceptance the family gave him in return. All the hugs and back-slapping just seemed to make him uncomfortable and an hour later, Matteo took pity on him and allowed the boy and his brittle smile to escape back to his room.

The only one the boy did seem to know how to deal with was Lancia. When Matteo had arrived at the house with Mukuro that first night, it had been Lancia who was on guard duty. Matteo had been the one to usher Mukuro inside the house, covered in blood and stumbling over his own feet, but it was Lancia who took over from there. He'd taken hold of the kid immediately, steadying him and guiding him into the kitchen where they kept the emergency first aid kit. He set the kid on a stool as Matteo grabbed a couple bottles of water from the fridge. He had cracked one open and handed it to the kid before moving away to watch as Lancia set out the supplies and boiled some water.

When everything was ready, Lancia dipped a towel in the warm water and held it in front of the boy's face. "Look, I ain't gonna hurt you, but this might sting a little. You understand me? I may look scary, but I'd never hurt a kid."

"You don't look scary at all," Mukuro had answered in a soft voice, still a little hollow with shock. "You have kind eyes. I know you won't hurt me."

Lancia, of course, had adored the boy from that moment forward. He'd spent so many years being known as Fearsome Lancia, who sent his enemies running with a glare, how could he not love someone who saw past his scars and his fierce expression at a glance? Who so easily saw the man within? Lancia had cleaned the kid up and escorted him to a guest room, settling him in and even standing guard at the door when the boy asked in a hesitant voice if he wouldn't mind staying for a little while. Since then, even when the boy had asked for space, Lancia had still trailed after the kid like a particularly overprotective mother hen any time he saw him.

Matteo was privately thrilled when Lancia came to him after Mukuro was introduced to the family and volunteered to take care of the boy's training. Lancia was always at his best when he had someone to look after and Mukuro would need the support in the days and weeks to come. Support Matteo simply didn't know how to give. Your first kill was never easy, even if the fucker did deserve it, and it would be doubly difficult for Mukuro since the man he'd killed had been family. He given his blassing to the idea and the smile Lancia had given him along with a boisterous hug left him certain that he'd made the right decision.

The pair were inseparable after that, one hardly ever seen out of the company of the other, and Mukuro seemed to flourish under the attention. He was more lively each day, more willing to open up to other members of the family and he even began coming down for family dinners. A few weeks later, Mukuro even came to game and it felt like a huge step, even if he did just sit in the corner and watch with a small, satisfied smile as Lancia trounced them all at poker for the first time ever.

**-ooo-**

One day, about six months after Mukuro had arrived at their home, Matteo walked out of his office onto the adjoining balcony to the sound of laughter, echoing across the yard. He glanced over the railing to find Lancia setting up targets in the courtyard below. Mukuro was seated on one of the low stone benches nearby and his laughter rang high and loud and Lancia echoed him so that their laughter seemed almost perfectly in synch. It should have been a beautiful sound, but for a moment it was almost a little creepy how in step they were. Then Mukuro's laugh turned into more of a giggle and Lancia's into more of a guffaw and the moment passed as if it had never been at all. Still, that moment had caused a chill to roll up his spine as if someone had walked across his grave.

"You boys seem to be having fun," he called, forcing a smile he didn't feel.

Mukuro glanced up at him with a bright smile as Lancia finished setting the targets. The boy had gotten taller during his time with them and his hair was longer. He wore it loose and shaggy and Lancia seemed to take great joy in ruffling it and mussing it up as often as possible. "Lancia is teaching me how to shoot!" He called, practically beaming with good cheer.

"Hey boss! Wanna come help? I'm starting him out with a Beretta. Should be a blast!" Lancia called, chuckling at his own joke as he clapped a hand on Mukuro's shoulder.

"No, no, Lancia, I have to finish up these balance sheets or Felicia will kill me. You two have a good time!" He called back, feeling his smile falter as he gave them a final wave and turned back towards the house. What was wrong with him? He was jumping at shadows. Matteo sighed heavily as he slipped back into his office, "I must be getting old."

Mukuro and Lancia watched him go in silence.

**-ooo-**

Seven months later, as he bled out on the sun-warmed tiles of his otherwise immaculate entryway, Matteo would stare up into Mukuro's peaceful face and his strange red eyes and feel a similar chill. Shock had set in and he knew he was dying. He could feel it in the way the wound no longer throbbed with that terrible gnawing agony, he knew that was a bad sign even if he could no longer articulate why. Blood thick as phlegm pooled in his lungs as he drew in each labored breath. He understood in a vague sort of way that there was something strange, something off about Mukuro's face as the boy knelt down beside him, but all he could feel was thankful that someone had survived. "…Mu…Mukuro… you have to… run. Something… something is wrong with Lancia. He's... gone mad."

"That's not a very nice thing to say about a member of your family," Mukuro replied, his voice as flat and cold as a knife as he cut new wounds in Matteo's already tattered heart with each carefully annunciated word. "I'm very good at what I do, but I didn't even have to really try all that hard with Lancia. If any of you had truly known him, truly cared, it wouldn't have been so easy."

Mukuro's fingers were cool where they traced his cheekbone and Matteo knew in that moment that though it had been Lancia who had crushed his spine, it was Mukuro who had actually killed him. He didn't understand how, couldn't understand how, but he knew it. "…why?" he managed, blood bubbling at his lips.

"You know, I always think that someone is going to ask how I do it, but they just never do. It's always such a disappointment. Why ask why? Does it even matter? Ask anyone and the answer is always different, but always the same too. Why does anyone do anything? Because they can."

"We were… family," he choked out. Had this always been who Mukuro was? Was this what he was from that very first moment? Was this the boy he'd invited into his home or had he changed at some point along the way? Had they done this to him somehow?

Mukuro smiled and, strangely, it was not unkind. "No. We were never that. This was just a house I lived in for a short while. You were just the people in it. This was just a way station on a much longer journey."

"You… you let Lancia go, you hear?" Matteo coughed weakly, finding it more and more difficult to clear his throat well enough to speak. The tiles were so cold and he was so very tired. "I don't know where you think you're going, but you can't take him there. He's a good boy. He doesn't deserve this."

"I imagine someone thought we were all good boys once," Mukuro replied softly. "But no one really is. I like Lancia. He'll stay with us for a while."

Matteo laughed wetly and then coughed hard, turning his head enough to spit blood across the floor. His eyesight seemed blurry and he was thankful for that small favor. He didn't want to see him anymore, this boy who had betrayed them so profoundly, "You're fucking crazy, kid."

"Mm, that does seem to be the popular opinion, but I do try not to let that bother me." Mukuro replied softly, his boots squeaked as he pushed himself to his feet. "Farewell… boss."

The door shut with a quiet snap behind him and Matteo was left alone with only the sound of his own labored breathing for company during the few moments he had left.

That boy was a monster. For only a monster could have torn the heart from his family with such casual cruelty. He'd heard of such powers, known that many of the more powerful famiglia trafficked in talents and technology that gave their members extraordinary abilities, but he'd believed most of it to be smoke and mirrors. Just incredible exaggerations made larger than life by fear and jealousy, mountains built from molehills. But this… what Mukuro had done to his Lancia… was quite real.

He had been a fool and his family had paid the price of his failures. And his favorite, his fearsome Lancia, would pay most dearly of all.

Tears leaked from his eyes as he stared unseeing at the blood-spattered ceiling high above him.

The floor was very cold.

And he was so very, very tired.


	2. Creations of Men

"_The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."_  
― Mark Twain

**THEN**

ESTERNEO  
NORTHERN ITALY  
1995

The new kid snored.

Chikusa wrinkled his nose and cast a glare through the darkness in the direction of where the kid must lay sprawled across the floor near the door.

Like this place wasn't bad enough, like the other kids weren't bad enough, now there was… him.

Everything about the boy irritated. The new kid was loud, cheerful, friendly and stupid. He'd been led into the room early that morning by the big burly guard with the limp and hadn't shut up since he got there. It really shouldn't have surprised Chikusa in the least that the kid couldn't even be quiet when he was sleeping.

Chikusa buried is face in his makeshift pillow, not really sure if he was hoping to drown out the sound (which was like listening to his father cut steel in the shop, a high-pitched grumbling whine of a sound that made him flinch and twitch every time he heard it) or smother himself so he'd just finally pass out. Maybe he'd wake up at home, in an actual bed, without five whining, whimpering idiots and the snoring kid for company. Not that he had a home to go back to anymore. Not that he even thought about it anymore or missed it or missed them. It was their fault he was here, after all. That man had come knocking on the door and they'd packed him some clothes and his toothbrush and sent him away.

He hated them.

Of course, he hated them.

He hated his father's scratchy bread and his red face, the way he'd tossed him into the air and the way he laughed, so deep and loud that his mother liked to joke that it would one day shake their little house down around them. He hated his mom, slim and tidy, who always smelled like flour and the warm, green tea she sipped in the afternoon as she leaned in the doorway and watched him dig up roots in the garden. The way she had brushed his hair from his eyes when he left with that man and said, "We love you, my darling boy, don't ever forget that."

Because they didn't love him, they couldn't love him, because if they did….

Chikusa rolled onto his back, dashing a rough hand across his eyes as he stared up into the dark. It was no good anyway, he hadn't passed out and he could still hear the kid's snoring just fine even with his clothes shoved over his head. The worst part was that it was hard enough to sleep down here when it was just the usual kids, the usual whimpering and sniveling and twitching and shifting about. It had taken him weeks to get used to that, to the absolute darkness and the sound of strangers moving around in it. To the kids coming in and going out and how they always cried all night at first. He had learned to live with the crying. The crying was easy because after awhile it was just so much noise and it didn't really matter anymore. It was the same with the whimpering and the sniveling and all the rest. The snoring though… the snoring was new and it was loud and it was different and it made him think about home.

If he thought for a second that he could find that stupid kid in the dark without stepping on anyone else, he'd seriously consider smothering the jerk just to shut him up.

**-ooo-**

The number of kids in the room didn't change all that often. Usually there were seven, sometimes there were eight or nine if they weren't taking anyone out for testing that day, but usually it was seven. Most kids didn't stick around for more than a month and new kids would be brought in to replace the ones that left by a smiling woman who would say that Tony or Charlie or Tia or whoever had gone home.

It had taken him a long time to work out that home didn't really mean home. That no one who came into this room ever went home again.

So, by the time the snoring kid arrived to be the new seventh kid in the room, Chikusa had already seen fifteen other kids come and go. There was a bunk bed in the corner of the room that no one ever slept on. He kept track of things by scraping marks into the chipping paint on the bedpost. A mark for each kid who left and didn't come back and a different mark for every day he'd woken up on the hard concrete floor. There'd been a girl named Ana here when he'd first been brought in. She was nice. She'd told him he reminded her of her baby brother and given him half of her orange and told him that kids who slept in the bed attracted attention. That it was bad to attract attention here and that was why they all slept on the floor, so that none of them would be obvious choice.

He hadn't understood what she meant.

The next week a kid who was introduced as Marco was brought in and Ana didn't warn him about the bed. No one warned him about the bed; not even Chikusa, who had staked out a corner of the floor near one wall, a little closer to the back of the room than the front. He'd never liked talking to strangers and Marco was a big kid, older and taller than the others, and he'd claimed the bed as his own with a glare the moment he'd come into the room. It had been easier just to let him have it and whatever came with it.

When the door opened a little while after they turned the lights out that night, Chikusa wasn't really surprised. He lay still in his place on the floor near the wall and watched in silence as one of the big guys in the pale blue pajamas came in and coaxed a sleepy Marco from the bed and led him out the door.

Marco never came back so Ana and the others divided up the stuff he left behind when they brought a new kid in a couple days later.

They eventually stopped bothering to introduce the new kids a couple weeks after Chikusa arrived and so by the time snoring kid was shoved unceremoniously into the room several months later, Chikusa didn't know the names of any of the other kids and he liked it that way. He didn't talk to any of them and none of them talked to him and that was the way he wanted it. He didn't need to know their names. It was easier to just label them in his mind for ease of reference, giving them nicknames because of things they did or said. Nothing more complicated than whiny boy or Mommy's girl or Captain Denial (who had been a short, stocky kid with long hair who'd kept insisting that this was a mistake and he didn't belong here because he was important).

Eventually it didn't matter so much when someone disappeared or a new person showed up because they weren't really people so much as a new type of irritant, like an itch you can't scratch, and they'd be gone soon enough.

Except snoring kid didn't leave.

Five weeks later and snoring kid was still lying there in the middle of the floor snoring away every night and being loud and obnoxious and irritating all day. The snoring was bad enough, but the kid also complained.

There were only six of them now, had been for a while and they took each of them out for testing more frequently. Chikusa spent a lot of his time in the room these days sweating and shivering and sometimes throwing up in a bucket in the corner because they kept injecting him with things that made him sick. So maybe he didn't mind the snoring at night so much anymore, but it was probably just because he was too tired for it to keep him up like it once did. The other kids were so quiet, so listless that it made snoring kid seem brighter more alive by comparison. He snored and he complained and he was annoying, but he was also always there. They didn't take him for testing as often as others (which Chikusa thought was probably because they found him annoying too) so he was always, always there beside him yammering away about something while Chikusa cradled his aching head in his hands or threw up what little he'd managed to choke down at breakfast.

It had taken him awhile to realize that the snoring boy wasn't really complaining to anyone in particular. He just seemed to like the sound of his own voice, so maybe it helped him to complain out loud about everything the same way it helped Chikusa to not have to talk at all.

And maybe, maybe, at night that terrible, heaving, grinding snore let him know that snoring kid was still there, that he was still alive and there and so maybe Chikusa wasn't as alone as he'd felt before snoring kid had shown up. Maybe he could sleep and wake up and trust that snoring kid would still be there to annoy him and maybe that… wasn't so terrible.

So every night he went to sleep and the snoring kid was there and he was alive and every morning he woke up and maybe some other kid was gone, but the snoring kid was still there and that was enough. That was okay. He could keep moving, could get through another day of tests and questions and being poked and prodded and injected with things because that loud, annoying kid would be there when he got back.

He snored all night and complained loudly all day when the adults weren't around to hear. He complained about the food (or the lack thereof), the tests, how hot the room was or how cold the floor was. He complained about the lack of blankets and clean clothes and how very badly he wanted a bath because they all smelled gross.

He had complained about wanting a bath until the day they hauled him out of the room before breakfast. When he'd stumbled back in after lunch he was soaking wet and shivering. He'd stood in the corner for the rest of the day with his arms wrapped around his stomach, shivering and muttering curse words under his breath; a puddle slowly forming beneath him as his clothes dripped dry around him. He hadn't complained about wanting a bath after that and it seemed like he was more careful to keep his voice down when he complained about other things. But complain he did and his constant flow of compliant was familiar and that made it almost….

Sometimes when Chikusa he was feeling particularly sick, he laid down on the cold floor, closed his eyes and listened to those mumbled complaints for hours. It gave him something to focus on besides the discontented rumble of his stomach, the screams they sometimes heard echoing down the halls and the sobbing of the other kids. The sobbing always made him want to lash out at them these days and he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to hurt them, not really. He didn't want anything to do with them at all. He didn't want to feel bad for them or even for himself. So, instead he listened as that one stupid boy snores all night and complains all day and it wasn't much, but it was enough.

**-ooo-**

He hadn't been able to sleep the day they took him away.

Hadn't been able to eat because he felt even sicker than usual. He'd shouted at the sniveling crybabies to shut up more than once. Had even slapped one of them across the cheek even though it only made them cry harder. He'd retreated to the corner then, made sure to keep even more space than usual between himself and the others. He didn't want to hurt anyone and he didn't want to care about anyone, but the snoring boy was gone and he wanted it to be one of them instead. One of the crybabies, one of those listless silent kids who lurked at the fringes of the group that were probably slowly starving to death because they never bothered to eat the food they were given. Any one of them could be taken, could disappear forever and he wouldn't care. It wouldn't matter. They weren't… they weren't him. They were all just the same, but he was different. He snored and he complained and he was obnoxious and loud and alive in a way none of them were and if he could disappear… if the snoring boy was gone….

Chikusa lay on the ground and listed to the soft sobs that were the only thing that broke up the silence now and he wondered if maybe he wasn't alive at all. Maybe he was dead and this was the hell his mother had worried and wrung her hands over sometimes when she came back to the house some evenings smelling of smoke and diesel fuel, her white gloves sometimes speckled with red. Maybe he'd died the day she handed him that backpack and turned him towards the door. Muttering about how this was for the good of the family and he'd understand when he was older and stronger. But he didn't understand and he never would understand why she'd, why they'd, left him alone in this place with these people who said they were family, said they cared, but made everyone hurt and bleed and disappear and die.

**-ooo-**

Three days later the boy came back. He was bleeding and stumbling, but he was alive with a bandage across his face and a swollen, bruised jaw. He had the same sleepy, vacant look that they all had sometimes when they came back -if they came back- after being gone for a couple of days. Chikusa himself had only been out of the room for surgery once and he'd woken up with eyes that could see so clearly and precisely he needed to wear glasses to make the world tolerable. He got terrible headaches whenever he looked at anything too long without them now.

He remembered being led back to the room that day, how it felt like the world was wrapped up in cotton and it was hard to hear, tough to focus on anything at all. He also remembered that the adults didn't care about that. That they only cared that you did as you were told and one of them was telling the boy to move and he wasn't. He was just standing there, swaying back and forth a little and staring into the room with a tight, pinched expression that probably meant he was trying to focus enough to do… something. But he still wasn't moving and the man behind him was turning red in the face, frustrated with the lack of reaction.

If he'd thought about it, he'd never have done it, because helping drew attention and kids who were noticed didn't last long. It was the same reason he tried not to talk and he didn't sleep on the bed and he didn't eat too much or too little. If he'd thought about it at all, he'd have stayed sitting against the wall and not moved and left the boy to whatever punishment would come.

Instead he found himself up and darting forward, wrapping his fingers in the boy's sleeve and tugging him away from the man and the door. Back to the back of the room where Chikusa slept, where he'd brought the boy's few possessions when he hadn't come back on the second day. He shouldn't have done that either. But he'd spent a half a day staring at that sad little pile of clothes and decided that if the boy didn't come back he could always just throw them away, give them to one of the crybabies or something. The boy stared blankly at his things, his fingers curling and uncurling at his sides before he turned to Chikusa and leaned his head against his shoulder.

Chikusa froze, his breath stuttering to a panicked stop. He'd hit other kids sometimes when they were too annoying or got too close to him and once or twice he'd been hit in return. But he didn't touch them and he didn't touch them. Not like this. They didn't lean on him for support or comfort or try to be close to him like this. And he didn't want them to. Didn't want him to either. Touching made everything so much more real, made them real and they could be gone at any time and if they weren't real then he didn't have to remember them and it didn't have to hurt, but it they were real then he couldn't… he couldn't….

"I'm Ken. Ken Joshima," the boy murmured, his voice low and raw like he'd been screaming for days. He probably had. "You're…?"

"Chikusa," he whispered in return, his fingers tightening where they still clutched at the thin fabric of the boy's sleeve. It was too late anyway. It had already hurt to see him taken away. It would hurt when he died. Did it really matter so much if he touched him now? Would it really hurt any less? He held that sleeve and knew that he was going down a rabbit hole that he'd never be able to climb back out of, "…what did they do to you?"

Why was he asking? He'd never wanted to know before, never cared. He didn't talk to the others. He'd never told any of them what was done to him, didn't ask what was done to them. Of course, he'd never told them his name either and they'd never told him theirs. He'd never told them anything but to shut up. Why was snoring kid… no… Ken different?

"Chikusa," Ken murmured like he was trying it out. Maybe he was. "Dunno. There were animals, maybe? I don't know. Something about channels and animals and wolves and they did something to my teeth. It hurt, it just… it really hurt. I'm so fucking tired."

"That's a bad word," Chikusa murmured and he felt Ken shrug. "Sleep here," he heard himself say. And he was doing it again. What was wrong with him? This was so stupid. He was being so, so stupid. First, taking his things, then helping him, then talking to him and now he was going to sleep beside him? He was so, so, so, so stupid. And yet his mouth just kept right on talking without his permission, "I'll wake you if they bring food."

Food was never a certainty, after all. Sometimes food was dropped by three times a day, sometimes only once and- far less often- food would show up four or five times in a day for no obvious reason. One memorable time all they'd gotten for a day and half had been a half a bag of stale donuts tossed in to them just before the lights went out. So, Chikusa had taken to squirreling away bits of bread and fruit for those times, hiding them in his blanket so the other kids wouldn't be able to steal them easily. He had an apple hidden away now. Maybe if they didn't bring dinner he would let Ken have half. Not all of it, but maybe they could split it.

Clearly listening to Ken talk so much over the last couple of weeks had damaged something in his brain.

Ken nodded, completely oblivious, and slumped to the ground to curl around the bundle of clothes he'd been using for a pillow. He glanced up at Chikusa blearily, "You too."

"Not tired," Chikusa murmured, but he sat down beside Ken anyway. Ken continued to look at him with that open, vague expression and Chikusa just barely managed not to scream or yank his hand away when Ken reached back and snatched it up.

"Stay."

Chikusa nodded wearily and let Ken jerk him around him until he was forced to lay down, pressed close against Ken's back. He could feel the shivers now, a weak tremble that seemed to shake the world and he pulled his blanket (a remnant of some unnamed kid who'd come and gone weeks ago) over them both, snagging the apple and tucking it deep into Ken's makeshift pillow for safekeeping.

Ken was warm, almost feverishly hot, but he still couldn't seem to stop shaking even as he fell into a restless sleep. Soon enough he was snoring and Chikusa could feel the rumble of it as it shook through him. And as much as he didn't want to be close to anyone, as much as he thought he should be moving away and putting space between them now that Ken was too far gone to know the difference, he stayed. Stayed and fell asleep with the gentle thunder of Ken's snoring in his ears and the warmth of Ken's thin body close to his own. And it wasn't anything like home and it wasn't safe, but for the moment it was enough.

**-ooo-**

He screamed when they cut into the side of his head. They'd numbed the area so it didn't hurt, but that didn't seem to matter. He could feel it, feel the dull pounding of the drill against his skull, smell the scent of burning bone in the air, feel the wet tickle of blood as it ran down into his hair where they hadn't bothered to shave it away and he screamed. Or at least he thought he did. He couldn't hear his screams over the whirring sound of the drill, over the pounding in his head and if anyone else heard they didn't seem bothered by it. No one cared and so he just kept screaming until one of the masked people hovering over him waved to someone else and then he felt the prick of the needle against his arm and the world became indistinct and terrible until the darkness swallowed him up.

He awoke trembling and gasping and strangely warm. "S'okay," a voice murmured and he recognized it and even in the dark room he could recognize Ken's hands, ridged as they were with smooth scars, his nails too long and always a little ragged. He clutched one of those hands in both of his and closed his eyes. His head still hurt and when he moved he could feel the bandages ruffling his hair and it made him want to scream, but his throat hurt so bad that he was afraid to. This was the second time he'd woken up with bandages wrapped around his head and last time he'd ended up with headache-inducing vision and a pair of glasses; he was afraid to know what they'd done to him this time. "I could hear you screaming. I've never heard anyone scream like that before. I thought they had all these rooms sound-proofed so we couldn't hear, but I heard you. I tried to get out and get to you, but…."

Chikusa tensed, turning over in the circle of Ken's arms, he couldn't see him in the dark, but he knew what he was likely to find. He raised his hand to trace shaking fingers over Ken's face.

Stupid, shit-eating grin?

Check.

Split Lip?

Check.

Busted, swollen nose?

Check.

Blackened eye?

Probably also check if the wince as he pressed his fingers against Ken's swollen cheek were anything to go on. "Troublesome," he croaked. He could feel that Ken's grin only widened at the admonishment and rolled his eyes. Which thankfully didn't hurt so whatever they'd done at least they'd probably left his eyes alone. Probably.

"It's not like it matters anyway, right? Whatever they did to me patches me up pretty quick."

"It matters," Chikusa rasped, flipping back around roughly. If he was going to cry, he sure as hell wasn't going to do it where Ken could see him, because he knew that jerk could see in the dark. He didn't want this. Didn't want someone who would get hurt for him. Someone who cared enough to try and save him even when he had to know that neither of them could be saved; they both knew that there was nowhere for them to run to. He should never have helped Ken that day. Should never have touched him. Ken was going to die here. Everyone died here.

"Shut up," Ken grumbled, flinging his thin, bony arm back around Chikusa's chest and hugging him so tightly it kind of hurt. "We're not going to die here so don't be so stupid, ya four-eyed kappa."

He hadn't realized he said anything aloud. "Kappa…?"

"Yeah, because you look like a big dumb frog when you're gonna cry."

"… Shut up. I hate you."

"Uh huh, me too, kappa."

**-ooo-**

The screams woke them out of a dead sleep and sent both scrambling to their hands and knees in an instant, listening hard to the commotion outside. There were running footsteps in the hall, the screams of men, women shouting and what sounded like a gun going off again and again. Something had happened. Something was very, very wrong.

Several of the kids screamed when the door slammed open and there was a man there, dressed in a suit and carrying a gun. He had a scars on his face and his eyes were wide with something like desperation and fear as he darted inside and jammed the door shut behind him, flooding the room in darkness once more. Ken's hand found and tightened on Chikusa's shoulder and Chikusa found that hand with his own, twisting it around so that that fingers were tangled together.

He knew Ken could probably hear more, but all Chikusa could make out was the man's loud, panicked breathing and more screams in the hall and beyond. The man was whispering something beneath his breath, babbling almost, and though Chikusa caught a word here and there, nothing made any sense. Just 'kid' and 'wrong' and 'dead' and 'hell' and none of those things made any sense to him at all.

One of the kids near them cleared his throat nervously, his voice trembling as he asked the question all of them were probably thinking, "Um… sir… what's going…?"

A shot rang though the room, loud enough to deafen, and Chikusa knew the wet splash he felt against his face was blood even if he couldn't see it. He felt as much as heard the kid drop beside him and he scrambled closer to Ken as wetness pooled against his knees, began to soak into his socks. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't move... could barely breathe. Because that shot was either lucky or very good and if he screamed he might get the next bullet. The blood was warm and his head ached from the sound or from moving too quickly or just ached in general and he wanted to throw up.

He could just hear the other kids whimpering and the man muttering to himself over the ringing in his ears. There were still screams echoing from the hall and then suddenly Ken was squeezing his hand and pulling away. Chikusa would have grabbed for him, would have yanked him back down beside him if he could, but in the dark Ken was silent in a way no one else could be and the moment he stopped touching him it was like he'd vanished into thin air. All Chikusa could do was hold his breath, his fingers curling painfully into fists as he sat still, waiting and trusting that Ken knew what he was doing.

Moments or hours later, there was a heavy thud and Ken was beside him again, coaxing him to his feet, his voice low and urgent. "I've got his gun. We've gotta go. Whatever's happening out there won't be happening forever."

There were three other kids in the room, not counting the newly dead boy on the floor, but Chikusa didn't care about them. Those kids could cry or they could run or they could just sit there and wait for someone to come kill them and he didn't care. They weren't real and they didn't matter. Ken mattered. All those kids would probably just lay down and die in that room because they were weak and they didn't have Ken to pull them along. Chikusa's head still ached and he still felt like at any moment he was going to throw up on someone's shoes, but he could follow Ken's lead. With Ken's guidance they got to the door and shoved the unconscious man out of the way so Ken could yank it open. Together they peered out into the surprisingly empty hallway.

Whatever he'd expected, based on all the screaming and hysterics they'd heard, it hadn't been that. There were a couple of bullet holes and a weird scorch mark or two, but mostly the hall was just as white and empty and featureless as it had always been.

"Where are they?" Chikusa murmured, sidling closer to Ken as they stepped out into the empty hall. His socks squelched grossly against the white tiles and he flinched, looking down at them. So red and wet and he was absolutely going to throw up. He shivered, gripping hard at Ken's sleeve complusively as he looked back up and tried to ignore the fact that each tiny stumbling, shambling step he took felt grosser than the last.

"Dunno," Ken replied, putting an arm around Chikusa automatically to steady him when he stepped forward too quickly and almost pitched forward into the wall.

"Sorry," Chikusa murmured, pushing his glasses back up on his nose and closing his eyes for a long moment in hopes of getting a better handle on his dodgy sense of balance and queasy stomach.

"It's okay. It's fine if you need to lean on me a little."

Chikusa nodded, mainly because he wasn't in any position to argue. He wasn't a good enough person to tell Ken to leave him behind and escape on his own even though he knew that Ken would probably have a better chance at escaping without him slowing him down. He was pretty sure Ken wouldn't leave him behind even if he asked, but he couldn't bring himself to take the chance.

So, they set off down the hall as one with Ken leading the way and occasionally steering him in the right direction if he listed too hard one way or the other, leaving a single trail of red, spongy prints behind them. They went down the halls taking turns seemingly at random as they moved to different halls, each just as featureless and empty as the last. As they passed what seemed like a familiar set of scorch marks for the third time, Chikusa slanted a glance down at the boy beside him, "Do you even known where you're going?"

"Not really, but neither do you and we won't get anywhere if we just stand around and wait for someone to come kill us."

"Right."

It seemed like they spent a thousand years creeping down virtually identical white hallways before they finally came across some signs of life. They turned around another corner and there was a woman in a lab coat sprawled out in front of the wide swinging doors of the operation room. Her foot had caught in closing doors so that they were held open just enough that someone in the hall could catch a peek of what was going on inside. The puddle of blood beneath her that seemed to be growing bigger as they looked it, blossoming across the pristine white tiles like a flower. They could hear sobbing and a faint keening sound from beyond the doors and as they edged closer the sound cut off abruptly and then there was only silence.

On his own, Ken could probably have made it past the room silently with little trouble, but he wasn't alone. So, together they continued to edge forward, through the puddle of blood and over the woman in the lab coat who Chikusa recognized vaguely as being the same woman who used to bring the new kids into the room. The liar who told them the others had gone home.

He couldn't say why he did it. But as they eased past that just barely open door, he found himself reaching out to touch it. He knew this room. This was the room where they'd given him his new eyes, where they'd drilled into his skull. It was probably where they'd hurt Ken too, done the work on his teeth that allowed him to be faster and stronger than anyone else. This was the room where they'd hurt them. Where they'd probably killed the others and he wanted to see it destroyed with a sudden desperate desire that made him bold when he might normally have just kept on walking. After all that they'd been through… maybe he even needed to see it destroyed. Maybe Ken did too, because Ken didn't stop him when he reached out with trembling fingers, nudged the door open and stepped inside.

Later he would be glad, so very glad that they hadn't just passed it by, but then he was just scared. So very, very scared that it had been all he could do just to step forward into that quiet bloody room that was almost unrecognizable as the place he remembered. The operating room looked like it had been hit by an extremely calculating hurricane that had swept through and mercilessly destroyed everything that wasn't nailed to the floor. The steel operating table was overturned, tools were scattered haphazardly across the floor and there was a fine red spray of blood that glistened and dripped slowly down all those shiny metal surfaces, all those stark white walls.

The familiar men, still in their white masks, had been thrown like dolls against those same white walls, pinned there in some cases by their own instruments, some were just sprawled across the floor with their faces frozen in grotesque grimaces of horror or shock. One had been straggled with the surgery curtain, his eyes bulging and his face as purple and red as the bruises on Ken's face. It was so awful that there were parts of the scene that his eyes just glanced over as if they refused to focus on them even though he knew they were there. It was just the very worst thing he'd ever seen and yet- in that moment- all he could think was: good.

Eventually he noticed that there was a kid there. He was probably their age, maybe a little older, but he was small and slim and his hair was dark. He wasn't one of the kids from the room, or at least not one of the ones that Chikusa remembered. This boy stood ramrod straight in the center of the room with something like a tiny trident held loosely in one hand, his face turned away from them. He just stood there, pale-skinned and barefoot in shorts and a t-shirt lightly splattered with blood, but Chikusa was torn between embracing him and running away, screaming. He wasn't aware that he'd stepped back away from the boy until Ken was stepping in front of him with a low, rumbling growl.

"It's just as I thought, this world isn't worth it," the boy murmured, a soft chuckle spilling out of his mouth as he pulled away a piece of gauze from his face with his free hand and flicked it to the blood-stained floor at his feet. "Let's erase it all…."

The boy turned around towards where they stood just inside the doors. His face was covered in a fine mist of blood, like misbegotten freckles dashing across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and he smiled at them. And, for all that the smile was warm and welcoming, there wasn't anything remotely happy about it. Almost as if he knew intellectually the smile to use but had somehow misplaced the emotion that went with it. "Shall we go together?"

"Together?" Ken asked, his voice soft, the fingers of his free hand finding and tangling with Chikusa's.

The boy nodded and walked towards them, stepping easily over and around the shattered glass, bodies, blood and scattered tools that lay between him and the door. He moved with a fluidity and grace that Chikusa instantly envied because he'd always been a gangly, sometimes clumsy child. He paused in front of them and reached out to brush his fingertips feather-light against the shiny scar that ran across the bridge of Ken's nose and then touched the bandages that were still wrapped tightly around Chikusa's head. He had the beginnings of a scar of his own in the stitched flesh around his strange red eye and his smile seemed a little more genuine when next he spoke.

"Together," the boy confirmed, letting his fingers drop to touch tentatively against Chikusa and Ken's clasped hands. He repeated the word again as a whisper; part confirmation, part prayer.

They didn't know this boy. Chikusa had never seen him before he stepped through those operating room doors and he didn't even know his name yet, but in that moment he had known in his soul that he would follow this boy off a cliff. He was still scared to death of this place, of anyone who could do the things that this boy had clearly done, but that didn't seem to matter so much. Maybe it was because this boy had slaughtered the people who had hurt them. Maybe it was because he had saved them, even if that hadn't been what he meant to do. Maybe it was just because in that moment he seemed as lost and alone and broken as they were. No matter the why, he knew in that moment that this was where he belonged, where they belonged. So, if this boy wanted to burn the world to the ground, they'd set the kindling and bring him a match.

Ken must have felt the same because he was nodding, bringing up his free hand to catch the boy's hand. To press it and keep it held tight against their own. "Yeah, I'm Ken and this Chikusa. Let's get out of here."

"It's very nice to meet you both," the boy replied and his hand was as cool as Ken's was warm. "You may call me Mukuro."


	3. Standing at the Crossroads

_"__I'm a monster," said the shadow of the Marquess suddenly. "Everyone says so."_

_The Minotaur glanced up at her. "So are we all, dear," said the Minotaur kindly. "The thing to decide is what kind of monster to be. The kind who builds towns or the kind who breaks them." _  
― Catherynne M. Valente, _The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There_

**THEN**

CACCIATORE  
NORTHERN ITALY  
1999

"You fucking suck at poker," Lancia groused to himself as he trudged back up the long, loose gravel drive that led to the main house with a wallet that was fifty thousand lira lighter. Why the hell he even kept playing the game at all was a complete fucking mystery as he was notoriously bad as it and he didn't even really like it all that much. The only time he'd actually walked out with more money than he'd walked into a game with had been during one of the monthly games with the family and he couldn't even remember that night. Must have been awesome though as he'd woken up with five times the money he'd had before the game and all the guys had completely pissed about it.

It should have been funny that he couldn't remember the one time he'd been good at the damn game, but couldn't forget every other time when he was excruciatingly terrible at it. And maybe if that had been the only night he couldn't remember he would be, but it wasn't. Hell, even that morning was kind of fuzzy. He could remember that he'd decided to go to town to play cards; that he'd taken a shower and changed first, but everything else was kind of vague and fuzzy. He thought maybe he'd run into Mukuro at some point. But then again, maybe not, he spent a lot of time with the kid so maybe he was thinking of some other day.

Maybe it was finally time to tell Boss everything and face the music.

He was halfway up the drive when he realized something was wrong.

Marie had been watering the flowers in the front garden every evening at precisely nineteen hundred hours since the dawn of time. Or at least that's what he had always assumed since she'd been doing it since he first got there with the air of a long-kept and well-loved habit. His first memory of the house was of that little old woman standing out front with a rusty blue watering can clutched in her wrinkled hands as she smiled at him toothlessly, her eyes crinkled and merry in a way he'd never seen before. Old people had never looked at him like that before that day. They'd always looked at him like he smelled funny, if they bothered to see him at all.

Today the watering can lay abandoned in the drive, tipped on its side and dry as a bone.

He was running the rest of the way up the drive to the front door before he'd made the decision to do so, shoving the door open and almost slipping as he stepped over the threshold onto a floor that was covered in something wet and slick.

It was the smell that hit him first. In the mid-summer heat of that terrible June afternoon, the smell had been unmistakable, unavoidable. He wasn't a stranger to the smell of blood and gore, being a bodyguard for a mafia Famiglia gave a man plenty of time to get his hands dirty. He had already killed six people that he knew of, after all.

Six.

The first had been another kid, a fat little fucker named Tony who had tried to… well… that part didn't matter so much. Tony had hurt lots of kids in the neighborhood. Most of the kids there had been all right. Some had even been generous, some kind, but not Tony. Tony was a bastard through and through and he'd treated the neighborhood like his personal playground just because he was a little bigger than most of the other kids. Thought he was tough shit because he was working as a runner so he had a little cash, felt like he had family at his back. He'd used that little taste of power to abuse the other kids. Lancia himself had enough nightmares about the feel of that little bastard's hand against the back of his neck, pressing his face down into the gritty cobblestones of that filthy fucking alley to last him the rest of his natural life. That little fucker had deserved what he'd gotten… even if it had been mostly an accident. He'd never had to fight anyone before that day; he'd been big enough that most kids hadn't wanted to mess with him. Unfortunately Tony had something to prove and he didn't like the idea that might think Lancia was the tougher of the two. So he'd found him alone one day and decided to take his shot. Unfortunately for Tony sometimes all it takes to kill someone is a hard punch and a nasty fall.

He'd always been strong and, when he became a member of the Cacciatore a few years later, he'd only become stronger. He'd been an angry kid too; almost all kids like him were really. Angry at life, at the world, at the things that had been done to them and the lot they'd been dealt. Cacciatore and Matteo Salvatore had saved him from that. They'd taught him to fight, given him a weapon to master and a target to aim at. He'd dedicated himself to making Cacciatore great and he had never regretted it. Not when he had to fight, not when he had to kill and definitely not during any of the times in-between. Card games, training Mukuro, movie nights and sitting on the kitchen counter eating a sandwich after he came off the night shift guard duty rotation. Being in Cacciatore, having a family that loved and cared for him, these were the things that he valued above all others. They'd given him a home and a purpose and that had been worth killing for, worth dying for and, in the years after that one terrible day, he would often wish he had.

How many fucking times had he stood outside the Boss' office with his hand raised to knock and decided against it? Ten? Twenty? It wasn't like he didn't fucking know that the blackouts were a problem, something he should have told him about straight away. He was just… he was just so damn scared. Scared of what those blackouts meant for him, scared that they might mean he wasn't of use to the family anymore. He knew they wouldn't kick him out or anything. Hell, they'd let Gino stay on as a cook's assistant even though he was blind as a fucking bat in a soundproof box. They'd find a place for him, sure, and they'd take care of him because he was family. But he didn't want to be a burden. He didn't want to be taken care of. He wanted to take care of them instead. So, he'd hesitated, he'd waited and hoped the problem would clear up on it's own and when it didn't he'd enlisted Mukuro's help to keep an eye on him.

-ooo-

May that year had been particularly wet and so on the rare days when the sun could be bothered to show up and the world dried out a little, Mukuro could usually be found out on the grounds of the estate. He was often alone, as he seemed to prefer to be. He'd always been unfailingly polite to the rest of the family, but it was a rare day when he went out of his way to spend time with them. Instead he spent most of those warm, sunny days lounging in the sun or doing small chores like gardening or- as he was doing that day- weapon maintenance. "Hey kid," Lancia called, as he strolled down the lawn to where Mukuro had laid out a bright, plaid blanket to sit on. He had two large baskets on either side of him, both filled to the brim with the various pistols and shotguns that made up the family arsenal.

"Mr. Lancia, hello," Mukuro replied, not looking up at him from where he sat cross-legged on a blanket with one of the house Berettas set out in pieces before him, a cleaning brush in hand.

"Just Lancia, kid. You're doing a good job there," he crouched down to examine the section of parts that had obviously already been cleaned. They looked brand new which was pretty damn impressive; the older kids were total shit at cleaning the guns. "I've never been great at the maintenance myself. Shooting, dismantling, putting it back together, no problem; but taking care of things has never really been my thing."

"All evidence to the contrary," Mukuro replied softly, gaze still focused on his task. "You've always taken very good care of me."

Lancia felt his cheeks flush with heat and grimaced at the unexpected praise. He had to clear his throat twice before he felt confident it wouldn't crack and even then his voice was still rough when he spoke. "Th-thanks, kid."

"You shouldn't thank me," Mukuro murmured, glancing up with a sly smile on his lips. "If Gino had his way, I'd never have any chocolate at all. I'm very fortunate to have you to help me. You're a very important person to me, Lancia."

"You don't have any problem stealing from the kitchens all by yourself." Lancia smiled crookedly at the thought of the blind cook, taking inventory to find the chocolate box cleaned out again and all the cursing that would follow. "You're a good kid, Mukuro."

"I'm really not."

"Right," Lancia rubbed a hand over his chin, grimacing a bit at the rough brush of stubble that reminded him that he hadn't shaved that morning. Mukuro had always been a bit weird about compliments like that. He thought, during the few instances when he allowed himself to dwell on it, that maybe it had something to do with the kid's parents. From what little Boss had told him he knew that Mukuro's dad had been the one that roughed him up, that Mukuro had killed him to protect himself the night Boss brought the kid home with him. He wished that he were better at fixing things for the people he cared about. As it was there wasn't much he could do for a kid like Mukuro whose tormentors were already in the grave. All he could do now was protect him and make sure no one ever hurt him again.

Even him.

So, maybe, even if he couldn't bring himself to tell the boss yet, he needed to at least tell Mukuro. "Hey, look, kiddo, I have kind of a favor I wanted ask."

"Certainly, Mr. Lancia. I'm happy to do whatever I can for you; it's only fair with all that you do for me. What do you need?"

"I've been…" He paused, scratching his chin again, not quite certain how to phrase it. It was so ridiculous in the first place. "So, I've been losing time, kid. Do you understand what the means?"

Mukuro tilted his head to side, a picture of confusion, "That you don't remember things you've done?"

"Yeah, I mean, kind of. It doesn't happen all that often, but like a couple hours here and a couple hours there. I'll be doing something and then the next thing I know a couple hours have passed and I'm somewhere else usually doing something completely different with no idea how the hell I got there or what happened in between. It's… I mean…"

"That sounds dangerous. Shouldn't you tell your boss?"

"Our boss, kid, you're family now," Lancia reminded him absentmindedly, ruffling Mukuro's dark hair. "I don't know if it's anything serious and it hasn't happened in a while so I don't want to worry him if it turns out to be nothing."

"Then why tell me?"

"Just… in case I'm wrong, you know? I want you to be okay. I want you to know that if I start acting really weird or scary that you need to run. You need to run and find one of the others and tell them what's going on. I don't think it's anything to worry about and it hasn't happened in a long time, but… if something does happen… I just need you to be safe, kid."

Mukuro nodded as if this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, to ask. Lancia knew the kid was humoring him, because he knew it wasn't a smart or reasonable thing he was doing and Mukuro was smart enough to know that too. What the hell was he even doing putting all this on a little kid like Mukuro just because he was too much of a fucking coward to face facts. That kid had been through enough shit without him adding more to the pile. "Hey, you know what? It's okay, Mukuro, don't worry too much about it. It's probably nothing."

He sighed, laying his hands against his knees to push himself back to his feet when Mukuro's hands settled over his before he could complete the motion. Mukuro's hands were so small against his own. He spoke so politely and seemed so capable that sometimes Lancia forgot how young the damn kid was, even younger than he'd been when Boss had taken him in. "Please, Mr. Lancia, I want to help you if I can. "

He sighed, feeling his newfound resolve instantly weakening in the face of the kid's earnest gaze. "Look, I just need you to keep an eye on me, kid. If I start acting funny just let someone know or try to snap me out of it. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes," the boy replied, smiling brilliantly. "I promise to keep an eye on you."

"Thanks, kid."

**-ooo-**

As he shuffled through the door into the entryway, the stench was so rank he had to throw a sleeve over his nose and breathe out hard through his mouth to keep from throwing up. The entryway seemed too dark after the brightness of the sunny June afternoon and he shoved the doors open as wide as he could to let the light in. With the summer sun burning at his back, sweat dripped down his face, plastered his dress shirt to his back, and he was freezing, shivering and he wound his free arm around his stomach as if that might help. As if he could hold himself up, keep standing as he looked down at the body sprawled in the middle of the foyer.

He could remember that face smiling at him. Offering him a home when he hadn't thought he'd deserved anything better than what he had.

He could remember that face laughing and scowling. He remembered it sad and happy and mad and a hundred other things but, most of all, he remembered that face alive, but those memories were burning away, blown like overexposed film and now all he could see was… this.

This face.

This pale lifeless face; bloodstained and bruised and staring sightlessly at the ceiling high above it.

But… this couldn't be his Boss.

Not his Boss.

Sure, it looked a little like his Boss, but it couldn't be him. He'd never been so small or so fragile. He'd been a big man even as he got older and older still. Even as an old man he'd been stronger than most of the young men in the family. This broken body shattered across the entryway floor might look a little like him, but it could never be him. Not really.

Only…

Only it was.

Lancia blinked hard and he could see again- if only for a moment- and he knew the truth of it and was hard to breathe past the pain in his chest, curling in his stomach.

Matteo Salvatore had died on the marble tiles just a few feet from the front door, probably trying to protect to the other members of the family who were scattered around him like broken dolls. Lancia knew their names, he was sure he did. The family was not so big that there were people he didn't know, but as he stared at all those bodies, sprawled against the walls and across the floor, he couldn't think of any of them. Instead he remembered stupid things about them. Like that the fella closest to the door had chewed gum and popped it constantly. That the girl who laid facedown with her long orange hair lost in the blood pooled beneath her had really liked horses, so much so that she wore a tiny golden horseshoe around her neck… for luck, she said. Lancia swallowed a sob, pressing the back of his hand harder his mouth to muffle the sound. They were dead and he had been in town playing cards. They were dying and he was playing fucking poker when it happened. They'd needed him and he hadn't been here.

He hadn't been here for them when they needed him the most.

For a moment all he could see was a blur of red and he closed his eyes, trying to center himself like they'd always tried to teach him to do during training. He'd never been great at that kind of control. Always better with weapons than will or flame. When he opened them again, the pain was still there, but his eyes at least were clear for all that his cheeks were damp.

There was a lot of blood, the floor was practically covered with it, and there were tracks through it and away from it. Large feet and several sets of smaller ones, running or walking in different directions and the longer he stared at them, the less sense they made. He couldn't tell what had happened here at all, only that people and had come and gone after the blood started flowing. And if people had come and gone then maybe… maybe there was someone still alive. Maybe they weren't all dead even if the house was silent as a tomb. Maybe the people who did this were still here. Maybe he could still save someone or, at the very least, avenge the people he hadn't been able to save.

He looked to the dining room first since it was closest. Something huge had crashed through the doors of the dining room, annihilating the door's latch, before the doors had been shoved open so hard that one hung off its hinges. It was like they'd been closed to keep something out… or in… it was hard to tell. And it hadn't mattered in the end.

Lancia stumbled forward, "Marco? Mukuro? Ana? Gino? Lucia? Anyone? Is anyone here? Is anyone… anyone…?" He choked on another sob, pressing his sleeve against his face again as he stumbled into the dining room. He knew calling out wasn't the smartest thing to do, that if the attackers were still here, they'd hear him, but he didn't care. It was more important to find people who'd survived. Someone could be hurt or hiding and if he just crept around they might not hear him or might think he was an enemy and stay quiet. He couldn deal with the people who did this when or if they came and until that happened his focus was on preserving whatever was left of his family.

More destruction, more bodies in the dining room. He found Marco, who'd just turned nineteen and been cocky as fuck about his skill with a blade, curled up in a pool of blood clutching his stomach, his favorite knife on the floor beside him, covered in the gore. It hadn't helped him and judging from the lack of anything resembling a blood trail, it had probably been what killed him.

The kitchen was much the same, Gino had died in the pantry… he'd probably been hiding there and something had destroyed the door to get at him. He'd been shot and died on his knees. It was the cleanest and least violent death Lancia had seen so far.

"What the fuck kind of monster could have… god…" Lancia whispered, pushing open the laundry room door to find some of the older kids there. They looked almost peaceful, which seemed strange after the destruction that reigned supreme in the rest of the house. He checked them and found they all had a single puncture wound in the back of the neck, so at least they'd died quick. They might not have even seen it coming.

Mukuro wasn't among them and… he really wasn't sure at this point if that was a good or a bad thing. That it might not have been better to if he'd died quick and clean like this rather than in terror and pain like so many others in the family had.

He made his way through the house quickly, calling out, praying that someone, anyone, would answer him. That Mukuro would answer him, because he hadn't found the kid yet and, maybe… maybe he had the best chance. He was so small… maybe he'd found somewhere to hide. Maybe he'd been lucky.

Yet the further he went and the more bodies he found, the more afraid he became that no one had survived this. That all he'd be able to do was find the people who did this and kill them. It wasn't enough. It wouldn't ever be enough.

Soon Mukuro's name was the only one he called as he moved up and up, through the second floor and on to the third. Room after room, floor after floor, he ran into similar scenes over and over again. The kids had died quickly, but the majority of the adults had died… slowly, painfully. They'd been crushed, bludgeoned… whoever had killed them had been brutal and efficient in their work. They'd carved through the mansion as if they knew just where to go. As if they knew just where people would hide and they'd destroyed anything and anyone that stood in their path.

He checked Mukuro's room as he reached the third floor and found the door hanging open, the room empty; untouched by the devastation that reigned supreme through the rest of the house. If he was alive, Mukuro wasn't here. He wasn't sure where else the kid might hide. He'd been through most of the house and he hadn't found any sign of the kid. Where could he have gone?

Then he realized.

He was the only one Mukuro talked to regularly, the person who looked after him (as much as the kid would allow, anyway) and he hadn't bothered to tell the kid where he was going. At least he didn't think he had. Why would he? Mukuro might have thought he was still at the house, might have run to him when the screaming started, gone to his room looking for him and found him gone and….

He was off and running down the hall, his heart in his throat, he was still running when he hit the door shoving it open and stumbling to a stop as he stepped into the room and his world tilted on its axis.

He hadn't understood.

He hadn't understood _anything_.

He'd seen the wounds, the destruction, those footprints, how the kids had died quickly and how the person who'd done it had seemed to know. To just know exactly where they would go, where they would hide, what they would do, but… he hadn't understood what that meant. Hadn't even thought about it.

But now… now he knew.

His Steel Serpent ball was laying in the middle of the room covered in blood and gore. Those were his clothes dropped haphazardly across the floor on the way to the bathroom. The floor was littered with blood drops and meatier things as he stumbled towards the bathroom, he could hear the shower running and for a moment he hoped he was wrong. He hoped there would be someone in that shower, someone to blame, someone who wasn't….

But, of course, there wasn't because it had been him.

He'd done this.

The bathroom, the shower and the towels were all covered in careless splashes of blood and gore and water and the damp, humid air made it all that much worse.

He'd killed them all then he'd come up here, taken a shower, gotten dressed and gone out to play cards.

He threw up then all over those blood-splashed bathroom tiles.

He was shaking, sick and desperate to get out of the house, to get away from the guilt clawing its way up his throat to emerge with harsh jerking sobs from his lips as he stumbled down the stairs and out of the house, crashing to the pavement outside. His palms scrapped against the stone and he could feel the flesh peel back, the blood slipping free to drip into the warm uneven stones that made up the drive. He wasn't sure how long he lay there on hands and knees, sobbing into the pavement, only that he was still there when he felt another presence approach, when a long shadow fell over him and small, bare feet stepped close to him.

He shoved himself back, scrambling away frantically, "Mukuro, no. You've got to go, kid, you've to run before I hurt you too! You've got to get out of here."

Mukuro stared at him for a long moment, calm as still water and as expressionless as he'd ever seen the kid. "You won't hurt me, Mr. Lancia."

"… Mukuro?" It was hard to reconcile this serious, cold child with the kid he knew. Hard to believe that this was the same boy who he'd watched over, taught to shoot and play cards and steal chocolate from the pantry. The kid he'd adored. That hadn't been an innocent statement of trust; that had been an order. "What?" He croaked.

Mukuro sighed, looking away towards the house with the air of someone who'd when disappointed. "I honestly thought you'd have it all figured out by now, but maybe that was too much to hope for."

The same cold dread that had pooled in his gut when he'd seen that watering can shivered through him. "What's up with your eyes, kid?"

"This is the way they've always been. I just haven't let you see it until now," Mukuro answered, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants his strange mismatched gaze still trained on the house. "If it makes you feel any better, I didn't use you to kill the kids or Gino. It was easier to do that myself."

"What the fuck do you mean you didn't… use me?" Lancia choked out and this was somehow worse than opening the door to the only home he'd ever known and finding everyone dead. Worse than discovering his weapon and his clothes and knowing that he had done it. This was…. "How?"

Mukuro's lips tipped up into a smile and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds and that smile killed what little hope remained that he was misunderstanding what Mukuro was telling him. "You're the first one to ask me that. The very first to care about how it was done; it was a possession bullet. I used it to take control of your body. I'm responsible for the death of every member of the Cacciatore Famiglia even if you were the one who did most of the heavy lifting. You're the only survivor."

"Why are you telling me this?" His voice hoarse and heavy with grief and the very beginnings of rage, "Why not just kill me too?"

Mukuro shrugged and even though he was only a few inches taller than him while Lancia knelt on the driveway, it seemed like he was looking down at him from some great height. "Why would I want to kill you, Lancia? You can still be of use to me."

And it felt like the ground dropped out from under him and if he could have moved he would have killed Mukuro in that moment. Wouldn't have hesitated or regretted it once it was done. But he couldn't move as he knelt there, barely able to breathe through the anger and the pain, he felt a cool presence that felt like despair and seemed to settle around him like a cloak. It kept him still, kept him kneeling when he would have leapt to his feet. He felt the palms of his hand braced against the stone drive rise, but knew with cold, despairing certainty even though those were his hands, he wasn't the one commanding them to move. The last three fingers of each hand curled even as each forefinger pointed straight and his thumbs turned up to form the hammers of each hand pistol. He raised each hand pointing the makeshift pistols at his temples.

A cool hand slipped beneath his chin, lifting just enough that he was able to meet Mukuro's strange, dead gaze. His voice was soft, but firm. "There are two ways this can go, Mr. Lancia. Only two paths you can take now. You can choose to come with me, do as I ask and when I'm done with you, you'll be free to go on your way. You'll live. That's your first option.

"Or you can choose to stay here. Be aware that if you choose that option, I will destroy your will and leave you to take the blame for all of this. You will spend the rest of your natural life imprisoned by the mafia for your crimes, for betraying your Famiglia. You'll never see the sun again and you'll never see me again, but the guilt of what I've done to you will probably eventually drive you mad. That's your second option.

"So, you can stay here and go to prison. Or you can go with the first option and come with me and maybe, if you're very lucky, I'll get sloppy and you'll find an opportunity to avenge your family. But while you're waiting for that opportunity, you will either choose to help me with my work or I will force you to comply with my wishes. What's it going to be?"

"What the fuck are you, kid?" Lancia spat, a fine tremor of rage running through him even with Mukuro's presence still holding him relatively still.

"I'm sure you already know, Mr. Lancia. I'm the monster who killed your family and monsters don't like to be kept waiting."

"I'll come with you." The words burned in his throat, but they were the only answer he had. There wasn't really a choice here. Not really. Mukuro was his responsibility, had been from that first moment he'd stepped into their house. He'd told Boss that he'd take care of him and he would. If it took all his life and the next one too, he'd find a way to stop him. This fucking kid who they'd taken in, who they'd loved and who had in turn used that love to kill them… and didn't even fucking care. "And when I get a chance, I swear I'm gonna kill you, kid."

Mukuro's smile was bright even if it didn't reach his strange mismatched eyes. "I look forward to working with you, Mr. Lancia."

**-ooo-**

Three hours later, Lancia eased Gino's old, beat-to-hell Grand Wagoneer off the highway and onto a tiny access road that he knew from prior experience led to the Volpe manor at Mukuro's request. "Exactly what fuck are we doing here, kid? Everybody who lives here is already dead."

"Picking up the rest of our group," Mukuro replied, his attention focused on the road ahead of them. He was practically sitting on the edge of his seat. Lancia was fairly certain that in the year or so he'd known the little bastard, this was the closest he'd ever seen Mukuro come to enthusiasm, much less excitement. He was practically bouncing in his seat.

"Oh? Someone I know?"

"No," Mukuro replied evenly, "But you will get to know them, I suppose."

They pulled around the corner at the end of the drive and there were two figures sitting on the low front steps out in front of the little house. As they drove closer, he realized that they were both kids about Mukuro's age. One had dark hair and glasses and was wearing a fucking knit cap even though it was hotter than hell outside.

The other was a wild-looking blond kid with a giant bandage slapped over one cheek and wide grin. Blood stained the shoulder of his t-shirt, but he was bouncing on his heels as they pulled up so he couldn't have been hurt that damn bad.

Nonetheless, Mukuro jumped out of the jeep almost before it came to a full stop, slamming the door behind him and dashing across the drive only grinding to a halt a few steps in front of the blond kid.

Lancia sighed, shaking his head as he threw the Wagoneer into park and pushed his own door open, just catching the tail-end of what sounded disturbingly like a note of concern.

"…to yourself?"

"It's just a scratch. It'll be gone in a couple hours. Mom here just wouldn't shut up until I put something on it to stop the bleeding." The blond grumbled, gesturing to the dark-haired kid who had moved to stand near them, he was tall and slim, almost a head taller than either Mukuro or the blond kid.

"Somehow I doubt that's exactly how it went," Mukuro replied, his voice warmer than Lancia had ever heard it. "Everything wrapped up?"

"They're all dead, the investigative team. It'll look like the woman in charge of finances for the group hired someone to do it. Just another power struggle," the kid with the glasses answered, his voice so soft that Lancia could barely hear him at all. He walked around the jeep and the crunch of his footsteps over the gravel driveway caused both boys to tense. "We cleared out the last of the safes before we left and disposed of her body. Who's that?"

Mukuro glanced over his shoulder, offering Lancia a tight, warning smile before turning his attention back to the kids. "That's Lancia. He'll be coming with us."

"Lancia? The one who…" the blond began, cutting off abruptly when the hat wearing kid slapped a hand over his mouth.

"Rude." The hat kid muttered, glaring at the blond. He snatched his hand back a moment later with a grimace and scrubbed his palm against his pants leg. "Gross, Ken."

"You're rude," the blond kid replied, licking his smiling lips. "And it's not like he doesn't know who he is."

"It's still rude. Don't start trouble just because you can,"

"Both of you: shut it. Grab your stuff and let's get going. It's a long drive to Bologna."

"Bologna? What the fuck is in Bologna?" Lancia grumbled, glaring at the lot of them.

"The next target," Mukuro replied as he opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. Lancia's blood ran cold and he was still standing there a few minutes later when the boys had finished throwing bags into the back and gotten into the jeep. He felt Mukuro's presence slither down his spine and he was propelled roughly towards the driver's side of the car. He took the hint, but still glared at Mukuro has he got in and started up the engine.

**-ooo-**

It was two months after the slaughter of his family and they'd been the damn longest months of his life. He'd walked through them in a haze, mourning his family, trying to adapt to life with the real Mukuro and the two little urchins he'd picked up shortly after they'd left his former home on that terrible day. When he emerged from the fog he sometimes drifted into between assignments, he found that the four of them were sharing a room in a rundown hotel in Bologna. Mukuro sat in one corner of the room, arms crossed atop his bent knees, his head lolling against his chest. He couldn't tell if the little bastard was sleeping or just meditating or doing whatever the hell it was he did when he went joyriding around in other people's heads.

The minions, as Lancia had taken to referring to them, were sprawled out on one of the beds. The quiet kid with the glasses and the knitted cap was propped back against the cheap headboard with a tattered, well-worn paperback open in his lap. If he cared- which he didn't- he would find it completely fucking weird that in the two months the minions had been with them and in the middle of damn summer no less- he'd never seen that kid without that fucking hat.

The other one, the little blond loudmouth, had flopped down on the end of the bed and was using the remote to flip back and forth between the only two channels they got that weren't filled with static. Back and forth, back and forth, like he couldn't decide which boring ass news channel to watch. He'd been keeping up a running commentary about each program as he switched between for the benefit of the quiet kid who occasionally muttered a comment back or smiled at something the loud one said. It would have been kind of cute if they hadn't been a couple of murder happy little bastards.

"Fuck this, I'm going to take a shower," Lancia grumbled, rolling his eyes as he grabbed the bathroom kit and stomped off into the world's tiniest bathroom.

It probably wasn't actually the world's tiniest bathroom, but damned if it didn't feel like it. The ceiling was lower in the bathroom than in the actual room, so low that he had to stoop to keep from banging his head on the damn thing. In keeping with the hotel's general theme, the bathroom had a tired and rundown feel as if it just couldn't be bothered. It had a tiny shower with chipped tiles and a worn white curtain pulled around it next to a sink with a mirror over it. The bidet and toilet were shoved up against the wall beneath the dirty window that, thankfully, let in just enough sunlight for him to see what he was doing. He really didn't like his chances of the light bulb in here not being burnt out.

He slammed the bag he carried down on the sink and leaned down to peer in the cracked mirror. Hotels like this had always made him feel like a giant, which he supposed compared to most people he was, but this hotel seemed to really be putting extra effort into making him feel it. The face of a stranger stared back at him from the cracked surface of the mirror, a haggard, bearded face that looked twice as old as it actually was. He wondered idly if his family would even recognize him. Not that it mattered. They were gone, after all.

Gone.

And he was here. Here with their blood on his hands helping the little bastard who'd killed them prepare to do the same to yet another Famiglia. They'd have been so ashamed of him. He'd failed them and he just kept failing them over and over again because he was too much of a coward. Too scared to tell his Boss he was losing time, too weak to do what he should have done weeks ago and end his life so at least Mukuro wouldn't able to use his strength to shatter more lives. Instead he just followed Mukuro's lead. First to that Volpe house where they'd picked up the minions and then on to Bologna while they plotted and planned and he drowned in his own guilt and mourned the loss of his family.

And he wanted to hate every moment of it. Wanted to hate them. But he didn't and that was the very worst part. He still looked at Mukuro and saw the kid the Boss had ushered in that first night and he couldn't decide whether that had all been an act. He didn't understand why he was still alive when Mukuro could have killed him. He knew that it hadn't been part of the original plan, whatever the original plan had been. He wasn't blind. He'd seen the way the minions had looked at him during those first few days. Like he was a mystery that they couldn't quite understand and he even kind of understood why after seeing those three together. They all had some sort of weird powers he didn't really understand and the way they huddled together reminded him of the way some of the boys had been in Lucca. The ones that had known each other before they hit the streets; those kids had clung together, moved together, always watching each others backs, always ready to leap into a fight, loyal to the bone. The two boys they picked up at Volpe were the same way. They slept together, moved together. They were a unit, a united front against all comers, and though Mukuro wasn't quite the same as them he clearly belonged to them. He always stood a little apart from them, seemed to take care of them with the awkward air of someone who wasn't quite certain if he were doing it right. He brought them all food, made sure they were safe, but rarely leaned against them the way they leaned on each other. Whatever they were to each and however they had begun, after watching them for two months, Lancia was absolutely certain that if he wanted to survive killing Mukuro than he'd need to kill the boys first. He could see it in the way they looked at him sometimes, wary and distrustful and sometimes the blond one growled at him as if he could sense when Lancia was thinking particularly murderous thoughts. Those boys would die before they let him anywhere near Mukuro.

Not that, in the end, they'd had anything to worry about.

He'd started down this road with the intention of taking responsibility for Mukuro's actions. With the intention of killing him when he had a chance. And that chance had come and gone two weeks ago on the Vagare Famiglia's estate and he hadn't been able to go through with it. If he were honest with himself, he always known for all that he'd hated the kid that day, he'd known he probably wouldn't be able to actually do it when it came right down to it. Not once he was outside the heat of the moment. Wouldn't be able to do what needed to be done and put him down like a mad dog. No, at the end of the day, there wasn't any point to him being here at all.

He might as well end it now before Mukuro could use him anymore. It was really the least he could do for the people he'd killed and their families.

He fished around in the bag and came out with a straight-razor, it had been weeks since he'd bothered with it, but it would serve it's purpose well enough even if it was a probably a little dull. He flicked the razor open and raised it to his throat with a shaking hand.

_No, Mr. Lancia._

He glanced down at the words and the light pressure on his unburdened wrist, to find a small pale hand resting against his wrist as if it had always been there. Mukuro had been getting better and better at what he called the 'physical manifestation' of his power.

"Why?" Lancia croaked, his fingers tightening around the razor's edge resting against his throat he pressed it a little harder and felt it cut through just a bit, just enough to bleed. To prove that his body was still his own for the moment though that could change in an instant.

_I won't stop you if that's what you decide to do. There's no point if I have to watch you ever moment of every day, even I have my limitations. But, if you die, your family will truly be gone. Do you want that?_

"Fucking seriously, kid? That's what you're going with? I _killed_ them. I deserve to die for that, for what I've done since."

_Do you always blame the gun rather than the shooter, Mr. Lancia?_

"Give me a fucking break, kid. It ain't the same thing."

_It is. I was the one who killed them, you were just the instrument I chose to do the job._

"Why?"

_…__Does it matter?_

"Of course it fucking matters, kid. Why me?"

_Why? I needed a weapon and you were convenient. It only makes sense to chose the strongest and most efficient method available. What other reason could there possibly be? He sounded vaguely disconcerted. The only reason I still keep you around is because I need someone to act as Mukuro Rokudou in my stead._

"Why the fuck would you need that?"

_Illusions are… challenging to maintain and, no matter where we go, we will always be three children. It is suspicious when three children travel alone. People ask questions, too many questions, and we attract too much attention as it is. A problem that is at least lessened by the addition of a guardian to our number. As it is, we won't be able to hide forever and inserting myself into every family we run across is not a sustainable tactic. We will need a public face. An adult, someone who will be taken seriously. Someone to represent our… gathering._

"Gang."

_What?_

"Three punk kids? You're a fucking gang. Calling it anything else just sounds stupid."

_Gang, _Mukuro repeatedly softly, like he was testing the fit, weighing and measuring it before deciding whether it was to his liking. _Yes, that will do._

Lancia snorted, letting his head drop to rest against the mirror, the razor dropping into the sink with a clatter, red splattering across the dirty off-white surface.

He was just so fucking _tired_.

He watched the slide of red as it dripped down the length of the blade to roll across the worn porcelain, slipping in to fill the cracks. "You could get anyone for this. You could pick up some poor bastard on the street. You'd probably have an easier time controlling someone who wasn't fighting you all the time. Or you could just _pay_ someone like a normal person. It isn't like you don't have the fucking money for it. So, why the hell does it have to be me? Why can't you just let me go, kid?"

The answer came in a soft, toneless voice, like a cold wind blowing through the cracks in his resolve.

_Because I know you'll look after them... like you tried to look after me._

Lancia's breath hitched in his chest and his gaze darted back up to the mirror, his eyes wide and startled.

But there was no sign of Mukuro there, his presence had faded as if it had never been there at all. He was left alone with only the memory of those words and a sudden, striking doubt that left his hands shaking and a sob stuck in his throat, threatening to break free.

He splashed water on his face, rubbed irritably at the irritation of the cut on his neck. He leaned forward, face almost pressed to the glass and looked hard at his reflection, but he could see no hint of red in his eyes, no markings across the iris. He was alone, for now, though he could hear the television still blaring in the room outside the tiny bathroom and he knew they were still very much there even if he couldn't see or hear them. Still, in this moment- if he wanted to, if he really wanted to- he could probably pick up the razor and finish the job he'd started before Mukuro could stop him. Leave that little bastard to find another puppet to be his front man, to do his dirty work to… take care of those boys.

"Dammit." He growled, snatching a questionably clean towel from the rack to press against the wound still leaking blood down his neck to stain the white of his shirt.

This could very easily just be another manipulation. Just a new way to play him, to get him to do what Mukuro wanted. He knew that. Mukuro twisted people up in knots until they didn't know which way was up, down or sideways as easily as he breathed.

He'd done it with the Volpe Famiglia, getting the Boss to assassinate some of the smaller surrounding Famiglia before turning on each other. Probably with countless others that he didn't know about and while he didn't really understand what they were trying to do exactly, he knew that they were going about it by causing well-organized wholesale destruction on a scale he'd never seen outside of a damn action movie. And they were all like ten years old. They weren't even fucking teenagers yet.

So, he was left with two shitty options as, it seemed, he so often was. He could kill himself now, just pick up the razor and slit his throat and be done with it once and for all. Or he could… wait. Wait and see if he could find answers to all the questions he had about these boys. Just until he knew for sure if he'd made the right decision by saving Ken's life, by not killing them. It wouldn't help anything, but… he wanted to know enough to make a decision. To know what had happened to them, to know why they'd done the things they'd done. Whether they were worth protecting, worth saving. Knowing might not change anything for him. He might still want to kill them or himself to avoid being used by them, but he still wanted to know. Even if it didn't change anything at all, he wanted to know.

He'd failed his family, failed them unknowingly when they needed him the most. Stayed silent when speaking could have made a difference and he had helped Mukuro do so many terrible things since, but… this wasn't a terrible thing.

Because for all that he'd spent two months with these kids, he still didn't really know jack about them other than the little he'd gleaned from fights and their aftermath. Hell, the most he'd learned about them so far had been from what they'd done to the Vagare, a small, nasty Famiglia that Lancia had never particularly liked and couldn't bring himself to feel particularly bad about snuffing out. Anyone who trafficked in children and women deserved what they got as far as he was concerned.

Still, the way Mukuro had torn them apart had been terrifying. He didn't know- probably never would know- what Mukuro had done to his own family in its entirety, but he could tell just from the level of destruction that he wreaked upon the Vagare that what the Cacciatore had suffered had been a pale shadow of what Mukuro was actually capable of. With the Vagare, Lancia had had a front row seat to watch how expertly that little bastard could play on a person's insecurities, their fears, their hopes and dreams and use them to rip people apart.

**-ooo-**

Mukuro had done most of the work of setting up and systematically destroying the Vagare Familgia all by himself sitting in a room in a little inn just outside the Vagare territory while Lancia took Chikusa and Ken to the fucking beach. The boys had built sandcastles and run through the blue-green waters throwing mud at each other (all while Chikusa continued to insist on wearing that damn hat). And while they'd done that, Mukuro had engineered the destruction of an entire Famiglia. It had only taken two days of concentrated effort and there had been so few of them left by the time Mukuro had summoned them to join him at the Vagare estate to clean up the last of the Famiglia that it had seemed an almost been a completely unnecessary formality. If he'd thought what had been done to his family was cruel- and he had- it had been primarily because Mukuro had used him to do it. Compared to that, what he did to Vagare was fucking scary as hell.

There was a young woman, couldn't have been any older than Lancia was, who must have jumped from the highest window in the house, as the curtains in that wide open window fluttered in the breeze above where she lay sprawled broken and still twitching on the blood-stained lawn as they arrived. He'd watched in horror as Chikusa walked up to her, calm as you please, and slid a needle into the back of her neck. The twitching stopped almost immediately and he withdrew the needle, wiping it with a towel he'd brought with him before continuing on around the house unperturbed.

He'd seen Ken punch an old man in the gut when the man had come running out of the house as if the very devil were at his heels. The man had screamed and Ken had snarled something at him, but all Lancia had been able to focus on were the monstrous claws that protruded from the old man's back.

_It isn't polite to stare, Mr. Lancia._

And there was Mukuro's voice in his head, soft and teasing for all that there was an edge of exhaustion to it. Mukuro's presence settled around his shoulders and he was turning away from the scene and walking into the house, his steel ball swinging comfortably at his side as he strolled into another bloodstained foyer.

_Well, excuse the fuck out of me, kid, but it's a little weird that your little minion can grow two foot friggin' claws._

_You should really be less concerned about what Ken can or can't do and more concerned with not getting your head blown off. Do you think you can avoid the gunfire or will I be required to do everything for you?_

_You're the one who's insisting on wearing me as a meat suit, you little shit. Dodge them yourself._

_Yes, but you're the one who is going to be enjoying the pain if I don't. Though perhaps you're into that kind of thing now. You have been thinking so many terribly dark thoughts lately._

_Shut up and stay out of my head._

Mukuro's laugh was abrupt and surprised, almost more cough than sinister chuckle. _If I could trust you to do what I require and not top yourself in the bargain, I'd be happy to. I find your mind exhausting._

_Fucking good. I hope I'm running you ragged trying to keep control._

Lancia frowned as he continued stomping down one hall after another, vaguely aware that he was the one doing the walking now. That Mukuro had just given him a push in the direction he wanted him to go and left him to it. Somehow that almost pissed him off more than when Mukuro micromanaged his every move.

There was a man sprawled out in the hallway who had gouged his own eyes out, the blood and gore of the act still wet on his fingers as Lancia approached.

_One of yours?_

There was a long pause and for a moment he thought Mukuro had truly left him to his own devices. Then he felt the usual creeping sensation that he was beginning recognize as a hallmark of Mukuro's mental presence. When he finally replied his voice was strangely stiff and cold: _I didn't care for the way he looked at me_.

"Ah," Lancia replied, kicking the man's body hard as he stepped past. He wasn't sure if the urge had been his or Mukuro's. In the end, it probably didn't matter.

There were a number of other bodies littering the halls as he combed through the house in search of survivors (at least that's what he assumed he was meant to be looking for, Mukuro hadn't seen fit to mention). By the time the sun had been starting to set, Lancia had only actually found two survivors.

One had been a blubbering man with an obviously fatal wound who'd been left to die his in agony alone. Lancia had put the man out of his misery and continued on his way. The second had been a miserable, skinny little bastard who'd pled for his life and then tried to shoot him in the back when Lancia had tried to let him go. The only thing that had saved him from a bullet in the back had been Mukuro's freakishly fast reflexes as the little bastard had managed to take control and jerk his body out of the way just quickly enough that the bullet had grazed his shoulder instead of puncturing a lung or something. He hadn't been terribly surprised or saddened when Mukuro had turned round and used the Steel Serpent ball at Lancia's side to take the man's head clean off.

Mukuro had clicked his borrowed tongue at him from where he lingered in the doorway, "And this is why you can't have nice things, Mr. Lancia. I can't have you breaking my toys before I'm ready to part with them."

Lancia glared at him, slapping a hand against his injured shoulder as he found himself in control of his body once more. "How the fuck was I supposed to know he'd be that damn stupid?"

"You didn't check him for weapons and then you turned your back on him. Of the two of you, I don't think it was he that was being stupid. You're lucky I was keeping an eye on you or you'd be dead," Mukuro replied, stepping neatly over the blood that was lurching out across the hardwood floor of the office. He crossed the room to a bookshelf on the far wall, pulled two books out and pushed three other books in. There was a soft click and the wall panel swung open slightly.

Mukuro turned a glare on Lancia as if annoyed to find him still loitering in the middle of the room. "Make yourself useful and go check the main office. The boss should be there if Ken and Chikusa haven't already taken care of him. Kill him. I don't want to have to save you from your own stupidity a second time."

There was another mental push and Lancia found himself walking out into the hall and away from that tiny office. For a moment he thought he heard Mukuro speaking softly in a language he didn't recognize, but before he could make sense of it he was already being forced to take the stairs up to the next floor two at a time.

By the time he reached the upstairs office, alone in his head and under his own steam once more, Chikusa and Ken were already there. The pair were crouched down, one on either side of the doorway, as shots rang out from within and tore through the half-closed doors to bury themselves in the hall wall.

Ken was cursing softly, fiddling with several pieces of heavy-duty plastic that looked a bit like retainers. He'd ditched his jacket at some point and had a few minor wounds and scratches on his arms and chest. He had some sort of animal head tattooed on his cheek, so that was new. Where he'd gotten that in the couple hours since they arrived and why, Lancia had no damn idea. This was probably just one of those things that he was going to put down firmly in the mental box he'd labeled: weird fucking things kids do.

Chikusa seemed to have fared a little worse as he had lost his glasses and had a red wound on his forehead that would probably be surrounded by some truly nasty bruising later. He still wore that damn stupid knit cap even though it was stained with blood.

"…just stay put, stupid! I'll take care of it, I told you I'd take care of it. That jerk has to run out of bullets sometime," Ken growled, glaring at the dark-haired boy. His eyes widened slightly as he saw Lancia coming down the hall as a fast clip. He wrinkled his nose and frowned, he bristled visibly as Lancia approached. "Tell Mukuro that we'll be five more minutes. I've got this." There was the familiar click of a gun firing on an empty chamber as a clip ran empty and Ken was up and darting through the doors despite Chikusa's protests.

"Fucking kid," Lancia grumbled, following the blond through the door only to find that the Boss of Vagare, a man who Lancia knew by sight even if he'd never bothered to pay enough attention to catch the jackoff's name, had a second pistol in hand and he was smiling broadly even as Ken snarled and leapt at him. Ken was damn quick, Lancia had seen as much for himself in the few fights he'd seen him in before today, but for all that he was fast and tough, he was still a kid and apparently lacked the experience and common sense to know that he sure as fuck wasn't faster than a bullet.

All he had to do was nothing and the kid would be dead. He'd probably be able to use the opportunity Ken's death would provide to kill the other two. This was the opportunity he'd been waiting for. And all he had to do was not interfere. Just let it happen.

So, he moved. Faster than he'd moved in weeks, throwing his body into motion and grabbing Ken by the back of his shirt with his left hand. He used the momentum of throwing the Steel Serpent ball with his right to swing the kid back, up and out of the way, tossing him like a sack of flour into the hall where Chikusa was suddenly just there, catching him as if he weighed nothing at all and pulling him out of sight. The steel ball flew past the Boss' head, missing by inches and forcing the man down and away with a yelp, his gun momentarily forgotten.

Lancia coiled the chain around his forearm and turned his body, causing the ball to reverse direction, speeding back twice as fast and clipping the side of the man's head. It was a glancing blow, but it was enough to put him down in a heap. "Fucker," Lancia spat, stomping around the desk to kick the man's bleeding body.

"What the hell?! I totally had that guy!" Ken's outrage as the kid struggled free of Chikusa and stomped back into the room had Lancia rolling his eyes as he turned to face the boy.

"Really? You got some special power that makes you impervious to bullets, punk?"

"I'm fast enough!"

"You wouldn't have been," Chikusa murmured, his soft voice strangely loud in the otherwise silent room. He lingered in the doorway, looking strangely fragile without his glasses. His arms were held carefully at his sides, his fingers clutching and unclutching his yo-yos. His gaze darted around the room as if he were unable to settle his eyes on any one particular thing for more than a moment. "Given the angle and speed at which you were traveling, the bullet would have hit you before you crossed even half the distance. Probably through the right eye based on the angle he was holding the gun when Lancia grabbed you. You would be dead. You would be dead and I… I…." Ken had turned and run back to him, his irritation apparently forgotten in the face of Chikusa's distress. He hit him hard, knocking him back a step as he threw an arm around his neck so the last was said against Ken's t-shirt clad shoulder, his face hidden from sight. "He saved you."

"You're sure?"

"I can't not see that, idiot," Chikusa mumbled, nodding, his voice almost too soft to be overheard. "Don't do that again."

"Sorry, I...I thought I could... Sorry. I should have listened to you. It… it was stupid. Thanks, Lancia."

"Sure, kid," Lancia sighed, looking away to give the boys what privacy he could, turning his attention to the window.

There was a man running full-tilt across the lawn, he'd almost reached the tree line when a woman stepped into view from behind a tree and a gunshot rang out. The woman raised a hand, waving half-heartedly at the window.

Mukuro. Of course.

A soft relieved voice in his head whispered thank you and then was gone. He knew the voice was Mukuro's, had to be, but it didn't sound much like him.

The woman outside the window put the gun to her head and another gunshot echoed across the yard as the woman dropped.

He wasn't even surprised when, a few minutes later, Chikusa finally shook free of Ken's embrace to cross the room and shove a needle through the Boss' ear so hard it probably struck straight through his skull, brain and into the carpet below.

**-ooo-**

It had been almost a year since his family had died, over nine months since he'd tried to kill himself in that tired, dirty little bathroom in Bologna, and he was finally beginning to see the rough shape of why Mukuro and the others were murdering mafia Famiglia left and right in the scars each boy wore. Looking back, he realized he'd first started to see it in the way Ken had embraced Mukuro roughly when they'd all gathered together again outside the Vagare Famiglia's territory. The way his bloody fingers had gripped at the back of Mukuro's t-shirt while Mukuro touched an uncertain bandaged hand to his fluffy blond hair. The way Chikusa had hovered so close to them, his expression carefully blank as he kept his gaze on Lancia, tensing whenever Lancia shifted his weight. It hadn't really sunk in then- he'd still been too lost in his own pain to care much about anything- much less about those kids. But, after Bologna, he'd actually started paying attention and he'd thought about those moments and what they meant.

He'd realized pretty early on that Ken's skills were some sort of augmentation rather than a natural gift. The cartridges made that pretty obvious once he'd figured out what they were, Ken had explained to him a little bit about how they worked one night after Lancia had brought him back a bag of peppermint candies from the corner store. After that, it hadn't taken him too long to realize that the barcode on the Chikusa's cheek and Mukuro's queer mismatched eyes were things that had been inflicted on them rather than things they chose or oddities of birth. Once he'd realized that other things started to fall into place. He remembered Mukuro's mention of the possession bullet and while it had been a little before his time, he remembered hearing the term mentioned before in connection with a family called Esterneo. He knew the family had been ostracized and persecuted, but he also thought they had disappeared at some point. They'd been all but forgotten now, the mafia only had a long memory when it came to the living after all. He wasn't sure that was where the kids had come from originally, but he had seen enough to figure it had been somewhere… bad. And he could see how Esterneo might become a bad place even if it hadn't always been.

And he knew something about bad places, after all. He'd started out life in such a place and had escaped into the streets, leaving that place behind without a second thought. The streets had been the better option and there he'd been fortunate. He'd been a big enough kid not to be bullied too much, to be able to protect himself. Even when he was just some unneeded, unwanted kid scrapping out a meager existence on the streets of Lucca, he'd been strong enough to protect himself and the other kids who sometimes shared what little they had with him. When he'd been adopted into the Caccitore Famiglia he'd become a bodyguard because he wanted to protect them. He'd tried to look after Mukuro when he'd arrived for much the same reason. He'd seemed like a sweet kid and he'd been through a hell of a lot so he'd wanted to keep him safe. All he'd _ever_ wanted was to protect the people he loved and Mukuro had turned him into a weapon to be aimed at the mafia those boys despised.

He didn't know what happened to those kids before they turned up in his path, might never know completely, but he'd been around Chikusa and Ken enough to know that it was hate and rage and fear that drove those two. What drove Mukuro he didn't even dare hazard a guess, Mukuro was a question he knew he'd probably never know the answer to. He'd seen kids like them before, rough and unable to trust that the hand that reached out to them wasn't there to slap them down. They were all rough edges and sharp angles and it hurt to see the way the three of them clung together. But after spending a year with them, he knew they weren't monsters. They were powerful and they were scared and angry and they wanted to protect themselves and each other and… those were things he could understand even if he didn't approve of the way they went about it.

They'd been traveling by foot outside Nuvola territory after they'd burnt the mansion that served as the Nuvola Famiglia headquarters to the ground and they'd ended up camping out in the woods. They'd left the jeep in the city because it was too recognizable and had intended to use Mukuro's power to find a ride back to town, but apparently you couldn't possess someone if there was no one living around. They'd still have been alright if the Nuvola hadn't decided at some point that they didn't believe in owning cars and had instead made a habit of paying people to drive them everywhere or just walking to town when that was more convenient (difficult though it was to imagine that a ten mile hike to town was ever 'convenient'). It would have been funny if it hadn't ended been such a damn pain in the ass.

With few appealing options left to them, they'd snagged some supplies from the house, lit the damn thing on fire as planned and resolved themselves to walking back to town. Then, of course, they'd gotten lost so they'd ended up camping in the middle of the damn woods once it got dark and decided they'd just give it another go the following day. Lancia had been tired and his head ached from having Mukuro twiddling around in there all damn day, so he'd gone to sleep straightaway without even bothering to stay up long enough to eat supper. He'd woken up in the middle of the night because, exhausted or not, the body still had needs. The moment he opened his eyes, he felt Ken's gaze on him, sharp and suspicious even in the dark.

He'd been traveling with them long enough not to be surprised by that. He might not understand how those kids got to be the way they were, but he'd figured out enough about what they could do not to be shocked by it anymore. He waved him off with one hand and felt the glare relent as Ken turned his gaze elsewhere. They might not trust him completely, but they trusted their own abilities were enough to keep him from trying to attack them when he knew he didn't have the element of surprise. Rolling his eyes, he glanced over at the pair and was surprised to find all three of them huddled together on the other side of the fire. Chikusa and Ken sat on either side of Mukuro, propping him up like mismatched bookends. Mukuro had fallen asleep sitting up between them, his head lolling dangerously against Chikusa's shoulder, balanced there with the ease that only practice brings.

He sighed heavily and pushed himself to his feet, immediately putting them both on their guard. "Relax, kids, I'm not gonna try and kill him in his sleep or anything, I've just gotta take a piss. Do you want help laying him down or something? That can't be comfortable for any of you."

Ken wrinkled his nose, frowning, "Are you stupid or something? We're fine. He can't sleep like that so this is fine."

"Saying too much again," Chikusa murmured, reaching out to smack at Ken's leg.

"Ow, what? If he doesn't already know, he's gonna figure it out at some point. It isn't even that big a deal, dumbass."

He remembered standing outside the kid's door that first night Boss brought him home. He'd nudged the door open to check on him just after dawn and he'd found the kid fast asleep in the straight-backed armchair by the window. He'd always figured he'd just been exhausted and passed out the first place he sat down.

"…it's personal. Troublesome," Chikusa grumbled, smacking Ken's leg again.

"It's fine," Mukuro mumbled, his sleep-heavy eyes glinting in the firelight. "After all Lancia is a member of our gang. There is very little about me that he does not know."

"Kid, they could fill libraries with the stuff I don't know about you."

"Well, I suppose that's true." Mukuro replied, yawning and rolling his shoulders. "Nonetheless, I don't mind that Ken told you that. It doesn't mean anything. You two should get some rest. You're useless to me if you exhaust yourselves here."

"You sure?"

"I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't. Go. Sleep. We didn't lug those blankets all the way out here for nothing. Lancia, come sit with me for a while after you've taken care of the business that woke you in the first place."

Lancia rolled his eyes again and trudged off into the woods, "Stay out of my head, brat."

Mukuro shrugged amiably, turning his attention to the fire as Ken and Chikusa shook out the couple of blankets they'd snagged from the Nuvola mansion.

By the time Lancia returned, Ken and Chikusa were sound asleep… or at least Ken was, it more difficult to tell with Chikusa as he didn't snore like he'd swallowed a hive full of angry bees. Either way, they were both curled up together under the blankets on the far side of the fire.

"See you got the kids off to dreamland," he commented, tossing the sticks he'd picked up on the way back to the camp into the fire before dropping down beside the last boy sitting.

For a long time they both just sat there in silence and… it wasn't terrible. For all that he disliked Mukuro and his tactics, he'd never felt particularly uncomfortable around him. Though he'd never be sure if that was his own feeling or something Mukuro had left behind.

"Thank you for waking me," Mukuro murmured eventually, voice so soft that Lancia almost missed the words altogether.

Lancia snorted, not bothering to confirm or deny whether that had been his intention. "I don't know what those kids see in you that makes them act like that. You have them trained to heel and kill like you do me?"

Pain shot through Lancia's skull and he winced, glaring at the trident that had appeared from nowhere and rapped him across the head. "Fuck kid, that hurts, you know."

"It was supposed to. Bad dogs need to be disciplined properly when they bite."

"Oh? Did I strike a nerve?"

"Hardly. Though if you want to continue, I wouldn't mind striking you again."

Lancia shrugged and Mukuro gave a little huff of irritation, turning his gaze back to the fire. It was late and it was dark and it had been a long day in a series of long days, it was easy to get lost in crackle of the fire and the warmth on his skin too wound up to sleep and too tired to do much else besides watch the flames dance.

He was startled from his thoughts some unknown time later by the feel of a weight pressed suddenly against his arm. He glanced over to find Mukuro's bowed head resting against him. He sighed heavily, touching tentative fingers to Mukuro's soft, dark hair.

He wanted to hate him, had tried his damnedest to hate him for almost a year, but… what the hell was the point?

Hating Mukuro wouldn't bring his family back, wouldn't make anything better. He couldn't forgive him either, but… maybe he could go on like this a while longer yet. Maybe he could live with being here, with being the public face of Mukuro Rokudou. Maybe he could stay here and look out for them for a while. Because, even if they didn't know it, Chikusa and Ken needed someone to watch over them and Mukuro- for all that he was a homicidal, sneaky little son of a bitch- was just a kid himself. He'd seen enough now to know that they had their reasons for doing what they did even if he didn't like them, even if he didn't agree with them. They needed someone to look out for them in the hope that maybe they'd grow the fuck up and realize that revenge wouldn't make it better. Wouldn't make it hurt any less. They'd taught him that lesson, even though he knew it hadn't been intentional. So, for now, he'd stay and he'd look after them all until they were old enough to look out for themselves or until they had other, better, protectors.

He could do this one last thing for the family that he had loved and for these boys, who were the last surviving reminder of the fact that he'd been a boy just like them once upon a time and someone had tried to save him too.


	4. Letters From the Underground

"I can see we're going to get along like a house on fire," said Miss Tick. "There may be no survivors."  
— Terry Pratchett (The Wee Free Men)

**THEN**

ESTERNEO  
NORTHERN ITALY  
1996

They managed to get a dozen steps from the operating room before the sharp clang of metal hitting the floor alerted him to the fact something was wrong. He'd barely managed to turn towards the noise before Mukuro dropped like a rock. Ken knew he was fast, but he hadn't realized that Chikusa's reflexes made him faster. He was still just looking on in surprise when Chikusa was already catching the dark-haired boy with what seemed like the ease of long practice and asking for help in a strained voice as he struggled under the dead weight, trying not to drop their new friend on the bloody floor.

Ken stepped forward quickly, shoving his stolen gun into the back of his pants before grabbing one of Mukuro's pale arms and flinging it over his shoulder, holding it in place while Chikusa ducked under the other arm. Once Mukuro was balanced between them he stooped a little lower and grabbed the weapon Mukuro had dropped.

"What now?" Chikusa asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose awkwardly with his free hand.

"I don't know. I'm not feeling really great about staying out in the open like this. You?"

"No."

"Okay, then I guess we check these other rooms and see if there's like an office or, you know, just any room that isn't full of prisoners or dead people."

Chikusa nodded and together they staggered down the world's most awful hallway, dragging Mukuro between them and checking doors as they went. Everything stank of antiseptic and lemon cleaning solution and blood and shit and death. It made him want to tear his nose off. Instead he just kept on weaving unevenly down the hallway with Mukuro and Chikusa trying to find somewhere to hide for a little while. Because hiding seemed like a good idea right now as another gunshot echoed down the stupid white halls. He could tell it wasn't super close to them, but that didn't make him feel any better about it. Not when Mukuro was down and so he now had two people to protect instead of just one.

The first two doors they ran across were locked up tight. He could maybe have broken the door handles and gotten in if he tried, but he was too worried about someone having locked themselves in those rooms to bother when there were other options. Fortunately, the third door was unlocked and opened into a little office. They shuffled inside and settled Mukuro's limp form carefully in a corner against one of the file cabinets that were shoved up against the far wall.

They stood back and looked at each other and Ken couldn't help smiling. Maybe they weren't safe just yet and maybe they weren't out, but they were together and they'd found Mukuro who seemed pretty awesome so now they were three instead of two. That was better odds at least, assuming Mukuro woke up some time soon. He might not totally trust the dark-haired boy just yet, but things were definitely looking up.

"Think he's okay?" Chikusa asked and Ken shrugged his shoulders gamely. Mukuro's breathing and heartbeat sounded steady enough so he didn't think he was in any immediate danger, but… he didn't know enough about what they'd done to him and what he'd done to them to know for sure.

"Yeah. He's probably just tired. He killed like a billion people today or something, I'm tired after just knocking one out." Ken replied, smiling easily. He was a little worried, maybe, but there wasn't any reason to freak Chikusa out just yet. He liked Mukuro, Ken could tell that easily enough, so he'd keep his worries to himself for now. Chikusa looked rough enough as it was, still groggy from surgery and probably freaked out about what happened in their room.

Chikusa nodded tiredly, his attention shifting to the file cabinets. He opened one of the top drawers, shut it just as quickly and opened another and another before settling on one and flipping through the files inside. Eventually he pulled out a think file and plopped it down on top of the cabinets. He shoved the door closed and pulled open the next and the next and the next before pausing to flip through the files and yank one thick file out, flopping it down on top of the other folder he'd removed and then turning his attention to the other drawers.

Ken liked that about him. Liked how practical he could be even when he wasn't at his best. Hiding and hoarding food, marking the days, Chikusa always seemed to have a better handle on surviving than he did. "What are these?" He asked, stepping forward to touch the thick folders that were stuffed full of papers. There were names on the tabs. He recognized his own, tracing his fingers over the familiar letters. "These are about us?"

Chikusa nodded, pausing in his search to come over and stand next to him, lean against his shoulder a little. It was nice. Chikusa didn't smell like death or cleaning stuff, Chikusa reeked of that kid's blood, but he also smelled like home underneath it all and if Ken closed his eyes he could focus on that scent and it made him feel a little calmer, a little less anxious. He hoped Chikusa didn't notice, didn't think he was weird for it. "This is what they did to us," Chikusa murmured, the papers rustling as he flipped one of the folders open. "It's a record of all the tests, the experiments, some notes on what they were trying to do, I think."

"Anything in there about why? Because I'd really like to know why they took and kept us and made me… us… like this."

"Not that type of file. Don't think there was a reason except that they could," Chikusa grumbled, flipping the folder closed and turning back to the file drawer he'd left open. "Should help us figure out what we can do though. Better than nothing."

He continued to flip through the files in several more drawers while Ken opened his eyes and began to fidget and fiddle with the folders he'd already pulled out. Lining them up, then stacking them, tracing the lines of Chikusa's name and his own until Chikusa shut the last drawer and leaned back against the cabinet looking puzzled.

"What?" He asked, because he was pretty sure if he didn't ask questions Chikusa would get lost in his own head and never tell him anything.

"There's no Mukuro Rokudou," Chikusa murmured, casting a glance back at Ken. Ken shrugged his shoulders not really sure what that was supposed to mean.

"No, there wouldn't be," Mukuro commented, his voice soft, almost softer than Chikusa's. He blinked up at them with drowsy eyes, clearly having just woken up. "Mukuro Rokudou is what I am, not who I was." He chuckled softly, the rusty broken sound that was halfway between a laugh and a cough. "I don't know what his name was, the boy who they killed to create me, but I know he isn't who I am now."

Well, that explained it. He'd been wondering why Mukuro reeked of death. Not literally, he didn't smell like turned earth or decay or anything, but he did smell like he imagined cold and dark would. He smelt of danger and violence and home, of both predator and kin, so much so that it made Ken want to draw closer even as he fought the desire to just grab Chikusa and run. He didn't really get it, but he'd been able to tell even before they stepped into that room and saw him for the first time that Mukuro was like him. Was weird and different like them.

"You okay?" He asked finally, his fingers still dancing around the edges of the folders.

"I'll be fine. I just… overextended myself a little, I think." Mukuro commented, pushing himself up onto unsteady legs, leaning heavily against the cabinets. He glanced down at the folders. "These are yours?"

Chikusa nodded, "They took very detailed notes."

"Fuckers," Ken added, glaring down at how thick the folders were. Someone had probably spent a long time writing them, thinking about all the things they'd done to them so far, all the things they could do to them in the future to make them… better.

"Well, they were that. But this will be good for us at least," Mukuro replied. "Are these all patient records?"

"Looks like it."

"I'll go back to the operating suite. They should have had my file in there since they were actively working on me when I… decided I'd rather they didn't."

Ken snorted, rolling his eyes as he started poking around the office to see if he could find a bag or something to carry the big folders in. "That's a real nice way of saying you woke up and killed everybody you could get your hands on."

Mukuro laughed, it was a nicer sound then the usual chuckle, "I suppose it is. Honestly, I'm surprised you two weren't more afraid of me. I know… I know some of the things I did were…"

"Fuck them," Ken spat, opening the desk drawers one after another and coming up empty. "They hurt Chikusa and you and me. They were terrible and they were mean and they killed lots of other kids. I'm glad they're dead. I don't much care if you got a little crazy with it."

Chikusa nodded in wordless agreement, his fingers white where they gripped the top of the file cabinet.

"Ha! Found one!" Ken waved his prize, a cheap plastic bag he'd found crumpled in the trashcan under the desk, triumphantly as he stood up. "How'd you do it anyway? They forget to strap you down or something?"

"No," Mukuro replied softly, he gestured to the folders on top of the cabinet. "May I?"

Chikusa nodded and Ken shrugged, "Knock yourself out."

Mukuro flicked the top folder open, staring down at the pages, shifting them around, the papers rustling softly as he looked them over. He read quickly his mismatched gaze moving from line to line and page to page fast and faster still as Ken fidgeted beside him and Chikusa watched him with cautious eyes. When he'd finished with the first, he set it aside and moved on to the second, the thicker one with Ken's name on it.

At long last he glanced up to look into Ken's face than back to the page again, "This is what they did to you?" He murmured finally and Ken stepped closer to look down at the paper Mukuro was looking at. It just looked like nonsense to him, drawings and jumbles of letters that he knew were probably words, but they weren't words he knew. He did know a drawing of a body when he saw one though and maybe he recognized how some of the marked places on the drawing matched up with the control unit chips they'd inserted under his skin. Maybe.

"Yeah," Ken muttered finally, his hands tightening into fists as his sides. He wanted to rip those papers to pieces, but he knew that wouldn't help. Wouldn't make them less true, wouldn't make the things they'd done to him disappear. "Probably."

Mukuro nodded, glancing over at Chikusa, "You read these?"

"A little," Chikusa replied. "I didn't understand all the words. Do you?"

Mukuro nodded, "Most of them. We'll see if we can find a dictionary or something to take with us so we can look up the rest. They made you immune to a lot of poisons and you should be able to calculate angles and trajectories really quickly and accurately. It'll make your reflexes really good. I think they meant for you to be a sniper or something. You'll probably be good at close combat too as long as you're working with projectiles. Darts or something, I mean."

"What about me?" Ken asked, poking at his own folder again and flipping through the pages. None of it made much sense to him. There were a lot of pictures of animals.

"Cartridges. They made cartridges for you that you can load over your teeth that cause your body to change, take on aspects of different animals. So, some of them make you really fast or really strong or a little bit of both, things like that. We should be able to find the cartridges in one of the labs. We'll look for them."

"Okay," Ken nodded, risking a glance at Chikusa who seemed unperturbed by Mukuro's words. When he caught him looking, Chikusa gave him a little ghost of a smile, but it was enough to let him know that it was okay, that they were okay. He flipped his folder shut and pushed it back towards Mukuro. "So, what about you?"

"Me? I can mark and possess people, make them do what I want. I can also use illusions to hurt them, confuse them, kill them. I think… I think I can do other things too, but I don't know what. It's just… a feeling I have. If we can find my file, that would help."

"What's the eye about?"

"I don't know," Mukuro replied, touching the stitches and wincing. "I'm not sure why it's different or what the number is all about."

"We'll figure it out," Ken replied, clapping Mukuro on the shoulder. Mukuro blinked and tensed, surprised, but he didn't shrug the hand off. "Let's go see what we can find so we can get out of here. This place reeks and it's just gonna get worse."

Mukuro nodded, taking the bag from Ken and shoving the folders inside before handing it back. He bent to pick up his weapon from where he'd left it on the floor and when he stood back up he looked a little green around the edges as he steadied himself against the file cabinet again.

"Sick?" Chikusa asked, a note of wary concern in his voice.

"A little," Mukuro agreed, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. "It'll pass. Just… give me a minute. We'll need to be careful. I don't know if I got them all."

Chikusa frowned, casting a look at him over Mukuro's bent head. Ken nodded, realizing he was probably thinking about the man they'd left behind in the room, the kids too. "I knocked one out when we escaped the room earlier. He might still be alive."

Mukuro nodded weakly, still looking kind of sick. "You knocked him out?"

"Yeah, the asshole is probably still sleeping it off. I hit him really hard."

"Can you take me there?"

Ken frowned, scratching his head irritably as he thought about it. About wandering the halls and how everything had kind of looked and smelled the same after a while, "I don't know, maybe? These halls all kind of look the same, but I can try. But… what are you gonna do if he is? I mean, I know you killed all those other people, but… you kind of look like shit right now."

"Thanks for that. You're probably not wrong though. I can't do what I did to them again so soon," Mukuro replied, "but I should still be able to cast illusions and I'll be able to get close enough to kill him."

Chikusa's frown deepened, "Is that safe?"

Mukuro sighed, glancing over his shoulder towards the door. "Probably not. I killed everyone who was in the room with me and I think I managed to get most of the others to kill themselves or each other, but… I don't know. I don't know how many there were here or if they all actually died. We're not safe here, but we can't go until we have the things we need and it would be best if there were no witnesses to tell the Vindice what I did here."

"What the hell is a Vindice?"

"Mafia justice," Mukuro murmured, his gaze strangely distant all of a sudden, like he was looking at something very far away. "I murdered most of our Famiglia. They have a special place for people who do that."

"Bullshit," Ken growled, "No one's taking you anywhere. You saved us. Like hell we're gonna let some assholes lock you up for it."

"You can't stop them. No one can stop them, but we can run. We can run and we can hide and maybe they won't find us."

"Okay, then let's grab what we need to grab and kill whoever we need to kill and get out of here before they show up." Ken pulled the gun out of the back of his pants and took the safety off before grabbing Chikusa's hand and pulling him towards the door, the bag of files hanging awkwardly between them. "You think it'll be soon?"

"No? No, they're… there was an incident with the Vongola Famiglia. They'll have heard about it and will be tied up with that for a while. Trying to interfere in family business as if they have a place there." Mukuro shook his head hard, shuddering a little. "We probably have a day or two before they'll be free to investigate suspicious incidents anywhere else. Longer if no one alerts them to a problem."

"Okay. Where do you wanna go first?"

"We'll stop by the operating room first, it's close. Then we'll go to the room where they kept you, where you left that man." Mukuro replied, shoving away from the cabinet, his blade scraping across the top as he did. There was nothing about his expression or movements that indicated that anything had changed, but Ken tensed up and shifted so that he was standing a little in front of Chikusa. He liked Mukuro, but… it was hard to trust someone you just met. Hard to trust their temper when they could do the things Mukuro could do. Harder still when you had someone you wanted to protect above all others.

"Sure," Ken replied, trying to keep his tone light, easy. He knew he didn't succeed completely when Chikusa's grip on his hand tightened. "You should know, there were some other kids in the room. They weren't bad kids just…"

"Weak," Mukuro finished for him and Ken was pretty sure that wasn't the word he would have used, but he saw Chikusa nod in agreement out of the corner of his eye and he shrugged.

"I guess. You gonna want them to come with us?"

Mukuro shook his head quickly, easing the door open and peering out cautiously before opening it wide and stepping out into the hall. "No, let them make their own way if they can, but they'll only slow us down if we take them with us. You two are all I need."

Mukuro turned and kept moving down the hall back the way they'd come, disappearing from sight, presumably confident that they would follow.

"You okay?" Chikusa asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Ken nodded his head once, quick and sure, "Yeah, he's a little scary and he smells a little strange, but… I like him. He's kind of nice and I don't think he wants to hurt us. We can go with him. I think it'll be safe enough and I think it'll be good with just the three of us. Don't you?"

"Yeah. We should go, he'll be waiting."

**-ooo-**

They didn't find Mukuro's file in the surgery suite, but in the office beside it found something better.

And worse.

"They killed him to send him to Hell," Mukuro commented, his voice soft as his fingers traced across one of several x-rays that were pinned to the board alongside all those plans and charts. "For this. This was the goal. He had a natural aptitude for possession and strong gift when it came to the production of mist flames. They killed him again and again so that his soul could latch on to other souls and travel each path of rebirth in order to eventually create… me. So, that I would be able to use this bullet to it's fullest potential. To be able to use the power of others, to combine that skill with what I would gain by traveling each path. I would be unstoppable; I would be their greatest weapon." He laughed then, but it sounded almost like a scream or a sob. Ken wasn't sure what the hell to do. He didn't really understand what they'd done, but it sounded really bad. And Mukuro just stood there looking at the board, at all those awful plans done up in red, and laughed and laughed and laughed. That terrible raw, rusty, hissing sound that filled the room and echoed off the walls back at them.

Beside him, Chikusa looked like he was gonna cry, but he didn't look like he had any more idea what to do than Ken did. He hadn't had any friends before Chikusa, not really, not real friends, and he didn't know how to make someone feel better when they fell apart and that's what Mukuro looked like right now. He looked like he was teetering at the edge of some terribly high place about to fall off and be dashed to pieces across the unforgiving ground.

So… he went with what he knew. He grabbed Mukuro's sleeve, wrapped his fingers in it and pulled him back to them, away from that awful board and everything it represented. Reeled him in and towed him back across the room to where Chikusa lingered near the door. Mukuro's laughter had trailed off and had stopped completely by the time they reached the door. They stood together and Chikusa wound his fingers into Mukuro's other sleeve and maybe it helped or maybe it didn't, but either way Mukuro smiled a little, his gaze looking through them as he spoke, mostly to himself. "I woke up and I felt nothing. I wasn't angry, I wasn't sad or happy- I didn't even hate them. I felt nothing just… nothing. I was nothing. I didn't have a name or anything at all as I lay there. So I didn't do anything I just… laid there because there wasn't any reason to move. Then there was a man and he was wearing a surgical mask as peered down at me, but you could tell he was smiling. He told me I was going to make them great again. Then he left and I… I still just lay there while they took the restraints from my wrists and my legs. They asked me to sit up, so I did. There was no reason not to. And they began running tests. They were testing my hearing and my vision and my reaction to stimuli and my reflexes to see if all that time being dead had affected me physically. And the whole time I kept trying to remember who I was and where I was and what I was and why while they hit my knee with a little stupid hammer and shined a light in my eyes.

"When the memories came, they came slowly in pieces and parts, just a jumble that didn't make much sense at all. I could remember that I had been someone's son and then… I wasn't. I was someone's daughter, I was old and young and mean and empty and hateful and sad and filled with rage and so many other things and… then I wasn't. All of it was like sand falling through my fingers and I couldn't hold on to any of it for long. I could remember things from all those lives, but just a little and just for a few moments at a time, but what I could remember best was the hell of the paths in between those lives. The longer I sat there the more I remembered and the more I forgot. I was all of these people and none of them. I'm too many ideas and thoughts and desires shoved into a box built for one. And slowly as all those moments came and went I became myself. I was Mukuro Rokudou. I was only myself and I belonged only to myself and I would never be any of the things or people I once was, but I could be something different. Something better. And then they finished their tests and they put this in my hand." He raised his wrist, the blade held in his hand dangled limp and loose between his fingertips. "They put in my hand and told me that all I had to do was mark someone and I'd be able to control them. To tell them what to do, how to do it, to make them do what I wanted; whatever I wanted. They were so excited. So damn excited and that woman, who still had my blood splattered all over his clothes, told me that they had such plans for me. That she saw such potential in me. So, I stuck this blade in her eye and asked her to tell me again about all those plans they had for me."

"It's gonna be okay," Ken whispered and he wished he believed that.

Mukuro nodded quickly, swallowing hard and then he finally looked at them and there was an awful desperation to his face in that moment. "We go together. That's what we said and that's what I want. From now on, wherever we go, it'll be the three of us against the world, but… I… I need to know that you'll do what I ask. Even if you don't like it, even if it isn't what you want, I need to know I can count on you to do it. Even if I ask you to leave, to go and not look back."

"Okay, but…" Ken frowned, glancing at Chikusa and then back down at the blade dangling from Mukuro's fingertips. He wasn't great with words, never had been for all that he liked to talk. He reached down with his free hand and snagged the trident, tugging it gently from Mukuro's grip. "This is what you use right? To mark people so you can possess them, right?"

"Yes," Mukuro replied, his answer slow and careful as if he didn't quite trust why Ken was asking.

Ken nodded, flipped the weapon over and used the center tip to nick the back of the hand that was still holding onto Mukuro's sleeve. "We may never be able to trust each other completely, but I can trust you this much. I can trust you to use me when you need to and this way if you have to send us away, you can always call us back."

"I…"

And Chikusa was suddenly just there standing beside him, drawing his finger along that same pointed tip with a resolute look on his face. "This is our choice too. You aren't the only one who gets to set terms."

Mukuro just stared at them for a long moment, his mismatched eyes wide, breathing quick and almost panicked. He looked almost lost. Then the moment passed and he closed his eyes, took a long, steadying breath. When he opened his eyes again his expression was calm and placid once more. "You guys are so stupid," he repeated softly, his smirk wry and crooked.

"Damn right," Ken replied with a broad smile, offering the trident to Mukuro, who took it back with a nod.

"Okay," Mukuro murmured, shifting his glance back to the white board with its red diagrams and words. He climbed up on the slim table in front of the board, kicking pens and papers out of his way as he stood before the board. He swiped his pale hands across the surface, wiping away more and more of the ink with each broad sweep of his hands until nothing was left behind. "Let's get started."

**-ooo-**

This was definitely the room they'd been locked in for the last few months. That Other Tony's body was still sprawled out and mostly headless across the floor, he could see the bloody footprints Chikusa had left behind when he'd walked from the room (had seen them out in the hall too) and their few belongings had been strewn carelessly across the room as if someone had torn through them looking for something of value and tossing them away when they didn't find anything. But, other than that, there was nothing much to see. No man. No kids.

"How many kids were there?" Mukuro asked, tightening his grip on Ken's shoulder as he glanced back and forth down the hall.

"Three. An older girl, pigtails, cried a lot, she was new… well, newest. Two boys, younger than us maybe, they were here for a while. They stank of fear and piss. I don't know about the man or the girl, hard to smell anything subtle over all this, but the boys went that way." He gestured vaguely further down the hall away from the direction they'd come from. "You gonna kill them?"

"The children?" Mukuro inquired as if the man wasn't a question worth answering and Ken supposed he probably wasn't. "I haven't decided yet. Maybe. You left them behind for a reason."

Ken and Chikusa both nodded, but it was Ken who answered. "Yeah. I only cared about getting Chikusa out."

Mukuro nodded as if he'd expected nothing less and pushed away from the room, steadier than he'd been before, the pistol clutched tight in his hand.

They found the first boy almost as soon as they turned the next corner. He'd had his head caved in, giving it a horrible deflated, squishy look that was somehow grosser than Other Tony's gunshot head. Presumably by the wooden bat that was lying discarded on the floor beside him, covered in blood and thicker things.

"Nasty," Ken grumbled, wrinkling his nose at the sight and the smell.

"Yes," Mukuro murmured.

"This one of yours or did someone else do it?"

"I'm not sure," Mukuro replied, "I set illusions for the people I couldn't reach to possess. I kind of just hoped they'd kill themselves or each other to escape them and save me the trouble."

"So, basically, you have no idea how many people you've killed?"

"I'll admit, I didn't really have a solid plan when I got started."

"Yeah, well, I guess it could have been worse and the confusion is what let us get loose. Besides you'd just gotten done being dead, that's probably not great for planning. The powers were all new, right?"

"I assume so," Mukuro replied, shrugging as he stepped over the boy's body and continued down the hall. "I really don't have the faintest idea what he could do before beyond what was written on the board."

They continued down hall after hall, stepping over and around bodies and puddles of blood and gore when they found them. There was a body he recognized in one hall that he gave a resounding kick, earning him an odd look from Chikusa. Ken gestured to his face and Chikusa nodded, giving the body a kick himself as they continued on.

Eventually they reached a dead-end where they found the other boy as well as the body of the man. They'd both been shot, a relatively clean and surprisingly painless death, where they sat leaning together against the wall. Like they'd just decided to sit down and hang together against the wall out in the open where they could be easily found. Because obviously that made sense, Ken frowned down at them. It set his nerves on edge.

"Well, this is really fucking weird." Ken grumbled, glaring down at the pair of them. "Where the hell did they even think they were going all the way down here?"

Then he heard the door squeak and he forgot to care about the destination of dead people. He was turning, gun already aimed and fired before he'd even made the decision to do so. The bullet scraped against the girl's bare arm causing her to yelp and drop the gun she was carrying. She dived for it immediately while Ken stood there feeling vaguely embarrassed about the whole thing. "Sorry, I didn't realize it was you, I just…"

He felt a lot more justified in shooting her when she came back up with the gun aimed at them or, more specifically, at Chikusa. He hissed, shoving Chikusa out of the way as she fired and he felt fire and pain flare in his side as the bullet struck him. "Motherfucker!" He spat, dropping his own gun as he slapped a hand against his injured side. That hurt like a bitch, but he was so damn angry that it didn't seem to matter as much as it might have. He dropped to his knees, flailing for the gun with his free hand while he glared at the girl.

The girl's eyes widened in surprise. Like she'd just realized what she'd done or maybe she just didn't have enough bullets left to kill all of them. She hissed something at them in a language Ken didn't recognize, or maybe he did and he was just having problems focusing on anything except the fact that that some total asshole had just shot him, and then she was turning, running away with the gun still clutched in her small pale hand.

She didn't make it even halfway down the hall before Chikusa snagged the trident Mukuro still held in his hand and threw it. It tumbled end over end, striking her neatly in the neck. She crashed to the floor with a terrible gurgling sound, her pistol falling from her grip and spinning away down the corridor.

If Chikusa gave a shit that he'd just killed someone, it didn't show, because almost as soon as the trident hit he was already bent down beside Ken, fingers poking painfully at the wound in his side. "The bullet needs to come out or it'll heal in there. You heal too fast for anything else."

"Gross, you don't have to- ow! Ow! Dammit! That fucking hurts, you stupid jerk," Ken snarled, swatting at Chikusa's invading fingers even as he felt a cool presence settle over his shoulders. He shuddered and then suddenly he couldn't move an inch except to curse as Chikusa continued to dig around in his muscle and tissue in search for the bullet.

"Stay put," Mukuro ordered, as if he had another option.

Meanwhile, Chikusa had found the bullet and yanked it out, glaring at it for a long moment before throwing it back at him. "Stupid. Idiot. What were you thinking?"

"Don't call me stupid, I totally saved your ass."

"Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Who asked you to? I could have dodged."

"A bullet? Seriously?"

"Maybe."

"Yeah, how about we test that theory when I'm the one aiming a gun at you?"

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

"You both shut up or I'll make you shut up." Mukuro spat, giving them both a shove down the hall back the way they'd come. "There's no reason to stay here now. Let's find Ken's cartridges and get out of here."

**-ooo-**

He hated them more when they went upstairs. The house situated over the basement labs was way nicer and bigger than any place he'd ever been. Way nicer than the tiny house he'd lived before coming here. Nicer than most places he'd seen on TV even. And these assholes had kept them locked up in a single room in the basement. The room they'd emerged into looked like somebody's entryway, the ceiling was high and made of glass so that the sunlight outside filtered down into the room below making the room feel light and airy. Huge and open after all those tiny rooms and endless white halls.

"What a bunch of assholes," Ken snarled, his fingers tightening around the box he was carrying that held his cartridges. They'd found the little box in another small office that had probably belonged to the doctor that worked on him. He hoped that bastard was one of the many bodies littering the basement. And now there was this... giant fucking house. They'd been living in a box and up here everything was sunny and bright and it didn't stink and it made him want to break something, possibly everything.

"Yes," Chikusa agreed, his eyes narrowed in irritation.

"Be quiet, we don't know if there are people up here," Mukuro commented, scanning the room they'd arrived in. Ken sniffed the air, but while he could smell people, there were definitely people here or had been recently, he couldn't tell how many or where they were. His stomach grumbled painfully as he caught the scent of some sort of pasta sauce simmering, bread baking.

"There are and I'm gonna murder anyone that stands between me and that bread," Ken grumbled, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the fact that he hadn't eaten all day and his stomach was very aware of the fact.

"There's bread?" Chikusa asked looking around the room as if he expected it to appear out of thin air. Ken snorted and inclined his head towards the hall that led into what was probably the back of the house.

Mukuro, on the other hand, was too busy staring at the glistening tile floor of the entryway to be bothered with talk of food. There was a large, fancy engraving on the floor near the set of large doors opposite the hallway. Ken could tell just by looking at them that those doors led to the outside, to freedom and for a moment the urge to rush to them and fling them open was almost overwhelming. Ken closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of baking bread again.

"Esterneo." Mukuro murmured, his foot scuffing against the floor, his voice soft and deadly, like the sound of a snake sliding through grass. "They… this Famiglia… our Famiglia is Esterneo."

"What the hell is an Esterneo?" Ken asked, frowning, thoughts of freedom and bread forgotten for the moment as he opened his eyes and turned to look at the emblem emblazoned across the floor.

"It's a mafia Famiglia. They invented a bullet. The possession bullet, it's what they wanted me to be compatible with, but it wasn't created for me. They were trying to compete with Vongola and they abused the power that bullet gave them to kill people, a lot of people. The bullet was outlawed and they were shunned, persecuted, looked down upon as the brutal criminals they were."

"What the hell does that have to do with us?"

"I don't know," Mukuro lifted one shoulder, let it fall, and the curve of his smile when he glanced up at them was sharp and deadly. "Why don't we go see if we can find someone to ask?"

**-ooo-**

They found people to ask and Mukuro didn't ask nicely. So a lot more people died as Mukuro had apparently gotten enough rest while they were walking around the underground to able to use his powers again with ease. The problem they ran into was that most of the people in the house didn't actually know much about what went on underneath it. They were mostly the grunts, people who cooked and cleaned and took care of small errands and household crap. They knew that all the kids in the family had been taken down there and they knew whatever was being done with them was in the best interest of the Famiglia, but that was about it.

Mukuro marked each person they spoke to and once he was done questioning them, he had them walk out back where most of them either shot themselves or each other. By the time they'd gotten to the kitchen and questioned the chef who'd been cowering in the pantry there, they could see a pile of dead bodies out the low-slung kitchen windows. Ken watched the chef kill himself while they all sat at the table eating warm, crusty bread and pasta in a sweet red sauce and he'd never been happier.

After they finished eating, Ken flipped open the box of cartridges. "I'm gonna try one."

"Sure about this?" Chikusa asked softly, fingers dancing restlessly across the pistol resting against his bent knees.

"Yeah, this place is huge it would take us forever to search it on our own and we'd never be absolutely sure we actually found everybody. It'll be fine, I can do this." Ken patted Chikusa on the arm in what he hoped was a reassuring way before he shoved the cartridge that had been in the slot labeled 'wolf' into place over his own teeth. He did it quickly, before he could change his mind or think better of it and the click as it locked into place seemed to echo through his head.

He wasn't sure, but he thought he screamed then as his muscles tore and shifted and his fingers broke and reformed and everything hurt and hurt and hurt as it healed. Then the pain was gone and he could smell everything, but Chikusa most of all as the dark-haired boy was crouched next to him, his hand rubbing up and down the length of his spine. It was nice, comforting. Everything from the fingers against his back to the smell of home and even the less familiar scent of cold darkness that let him know that Mukuro was sitting beside him as well. Not touching, as if unsure of his welcome, but staying close nonetheless. He stretched his fingers, felt and heard his new claws clicking against the warm tiles of the kitchen floor. He rolled his shoulders and sat back, his spine and neck cracking as he did and it felt good. He felt good, even better than good maybe now that the pain was gone.

"Ken?" Chikusa asked, his hand still lingering, warm and welcome against his back.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Still me. Just… a little wolf too, I guess." He paused, laughed a little and the sound was somewhere between a growl and a purr. Weird. "Huh. So, that's what he meant."

"Who?"

"The asshole who beat the shit out of me when I tried to get to you," Ken replied, tapping one claw gently against Chikusa's bandaged forehead.

"Right," Chikusa murmured, frowning. "He's dead, right? He was the one in the hall?"

"Yeah. What an asshole. He kept calling me little wolf. He said a bunch of other shit too, I don't remember what. All sort of blurred into one big beating really. But he kept calling me little wolf like it meant something. I guess he knew. Anyway, that's enough about dead people, there's still one person alive in this house. She's upstairs. We should go see if she's more helpful than the others."

Mukuro nodded, "You okay to go?"

"Yeah, I feel good. I've got this," Ken grinned and it felt savage, right. He bounced to his feet and bounded towards the stairs, vaguely aware that Chikusa and Mukuro had to run to keep up. It felt amazing to stretch his legs, his arms, to leap and bound and run up the stairs and onto the third floor landing, skidding to a stop in front of a door near the top of the stairs. She smelled like green tea and some expensive, cloying floral perfume that made him want to gag. There was a dead body in the room with her and he could still smell the lingering scent of gunpowder and oil.

He felt as much as heard and smelled Mukuro and Chikusa arrive and he glanced back at them. "She's in here. There's someone else in there, but they're dead. She probably killed him and she's got a gun."

"Okay," Mukuro replied softly. "Let's get this over with."

Ken shoved open the door and prowled inside, his eyes narrowing immediately on the woman. She stood at the window, tall and straight-backed, gazing out over the green lawn or possibly the haphazard pile of bodies in the yard. Her hair was long and dark and straight and hung to the middle of her back, swinging as she turned to face them. Her white-gloved hands she held folded against his stomach the gun in them pointed down, her finger very purposefully not on the trigger. She was smiling like she'd been expecting them and Ken felt his hackles rise as he stepped in front of Chikusa, shielding him from this woman's gaze. Because it was Chikusa she was focused on, as if he and Mukuro didn't exist, weren't a threat or just didn't matter at all.

"Oh, you've grown so much," she whispered and her smile was delicate and fragile and Ken wanted to rip her throat out. "It's been so long, my darling boy!"

"Excuse me?!" Ken growled, nails lengthening as he advanced on the woman.

"Chikusa," the woman whispered and Ken could see the resemblance, she had the same straight dark hair as he did. The same blue, blue eyes, the same pale skin. "You wear glasses now. They said you did. "

"No, I…" Chikusa's voice was a mumble and Ken didn't have to see him to know this was bad. That this was going to be bad. He could hear Chikusa's heartbeat running fast and hard, smell the sweat and the fear.

He also didn't need to see Mukuro to feel the cool rage boiling on his skin. To feel his power rising around him like a dark storm, thunder and lightening on the horizon as he stepped forward into the room, pushing Chikusa back and out. "You will drop the illusion right now or I will rip you and it to pieces."

"Oh my, I hadn't thought you'd all be so close or that Nadia's boy would be the least of you. My, my, but this day is simply full of surprises," The woman chuckled and her features were suddenly less sharp, her hair more brown than black, her skin olive-toned instead of pale. "You must be Alonzo's boy. My, but you are strong, aren't you? I can't say I expected that particular experiment to pan out, but look at what fine work we've done with you."

"I'm no one's boy," Mukuro replied, his voice deceptively calm.

Ken stood at his friend's side, a slow warning growl rising in his throat and the woman glanced at him, her smile sliding into a smirk. "And you must be Lucia's mutt. You look just like her. How fitting they should give you such a gift. What a delight."

"Why?" Ken snarled, his claws clicking together at his sides as he tightened them into fists and shook them loose again and again, trying to stay calm. Trying to resist the urge to hurt this woman while they still needed her.

"Why what?" She asked, glancing at him in what seemed like genuine confusion.

"I believe what Ken is trying to discover is why you would do this? Why has this Famiglia been experimenting on their own children?"

"You were our hope, my darlings!" She smiled and it made her beautiful and terrible all at once. "You were our Famiglia's great hope. You were our children and we could make you into something more, something better, something that the rest of the mafia would fear and everything would be better! We would be respected again! No one would dare stand against us. You are our future. And look at you! You're splendid. Look at all you have done and you are just babies who barely understand what you're capable of." She gestured to the window, to all the dead members of her Famiglia laid out on the blood-splattered grass. "Imagine what you'll be capable of in a few years especially with someone to train you. Someone who understands your abilities, who believes in you and what magnificent heights you will be able to reach and will be able to guide you to reach those heights. In a decade you'll be strong enough to challenge Vongola and you will make Esterneo stronger than it ever was before."

She smiled at them and it was bright and sincere and adoring and Ken was leaping forward without thought, guided purely by instinct and rage. A quick swipe of claws and the blood was everywhere as she choked, her eyes wide with surprise as she clutched at her ruined throat. She fell to her knees, hands still scrambling uselessly at her neck, mist flames fizzling in the air as if she were trying to use whatever stupid power she had to the knit the torn skin, veins and muscles back together again.

Ken was still breathing hard, quick and labored, blood dripping from his fingers, when he noticed that Mukuro was staring at him intently. "Sorry," he commented and he knew how insincere he sounded, but in that moment he didn't care. "Were you not done with all that crazy? Because I was really, really done."

"Nope, I'm good." Mukuro replied, his smile dazzling and mean as he lashed out, kicking the woman's still bleeding body hard before strolling away towards the bedroom door. He patted Chikusa on the shoulder as he passed and Ken really wasn't sure if Mukuro was trying to comfort their friend. Or if Mukuro was just tagging Chikusa in to go deal with Ken and the mess he'd left on the carpet. Both seemed like equally likely options. "I suggest you both get cleaned up. We're going to need to leave here soon. If the Vindice come and catch us here, we're really not going to be able to explain all this."

"Sure," Chikusa murmured. He walked into the bedroom and brushed a hand across Ken's shoulders before drifting away towards the bathroom. "Thanks."

And just like that Mukuro was gone and the bathroom door was clicking shut behind Chikusa and he was alone.

Alone with the cooling body of the woman he'd killed and the man she'd killed before they'd come for her. He wondered why, wondered who the man was that she'd felt the need to kill him. Why she'd been so confident that they wouldn't kill her that she'd waited for them like that. This entire family was just totally nuts. Had the mafia made them this way? Or had they always been crazy and being condemned by the rest of the mafia had just let the crazy cat out of the crazy sack.

Ken curled up against the closed bathroom door and hoped what he'd done hadn't broken things between them. He didn't feel bad about what he'd done, not really, but he didn't want to lose Chikusa or Mukuro because of it. Maybe later he might even feel a little bad about having murdered that woman, but now he was just glad she was gone. She'd just made so mad. First with that illusion then with all that crazy talk about greatness and potential and being the best and mentioning his mom and just…

Whatever. He was glad they were all dead whatever the truth was and now that it was done and he was alone for the first time in months and months, he found he really didn't want to be. It was too quiet now, even with the super sensitive hearing the wolf cartridge had given him.

He reached up and pulled the cartridge out of his mouth and swallowed a sob as he felt his muscles shift and his fingers break again as things slipped back into their original shape. It didn't hurt as much going back. Or maybe he was just getting used to pain. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of Chikusa muttering softly to himself as he turned on the shower. He was glad that he couldn't make out the words; it was nice just to listen to the murmur of Chikusa's voice disappearing beneath the sound of running water.

Ken woke up some time later to the sensation of falling and the feel of a warm palm against his face as his shoulder jarred painfully against the damp tile floor of the bathroom. "Sorry, wasn't fast enough," Chikusa murmured, his hair still wet and dripping as he hovered over him and helped him to his feet. "You fall asleep in weird places."

"Sorry," Ken muttered, rubbing a hand through his hair and yawning. He wasn't sure what he was apologizing for exactly, probably everything. He noticed there was a large stack of clothes beside him that hadn't been there when he fell asleep. Weird that he'd slept so heavily that he hadn't heard Mukuro come in and leave them.

"It's okay," Chikusa replied and he smiled, just a little and Ken realized it was. "You want to get a shower?"

And then it wasn't.

"No," Ken whispered, glancing at the big, fancy bathroom, still humid and thick with steam. And even though there were no guards anymore, even though Chikusa was beside him and this pretty, well-lit place was nothing like the basement shower room, the thought still filled him with dread. "No. Nah, I'm… I'm good."

Chikusa frowned, but nodded quickly, decisively, as if he'd expected that. "There's no bath, but there are a lot of towels. We could get them wet and we could wash your hair in the sink. It's better than nothing. I'll help you."

Ken found himself nodding just as quickly, a little nervous that Chikusa might change his mind, decide that it was weird that he didn't want to use the shower. Decide he was just being an idiot and walk away from him. "Yeah. Sure. Okay."

"Okay. " Chikusa replied, bending down to grab the stack of clothing and bandages off the floor before catching hold of his hand and ushering him into the bathroom. "Help me change my bandages?"

"Sure."

**-ooo-**

Ken didn't remember much about his parents. He'd been really young when they died so most of his knowledge came secondhand from his grandma. She hadn't talked about them often and he hadn't asked because every time she did talk about them she cried. Not a lot and she tried to hide it from him when she could, but he'd known. Their house had been warm and small and very little happened in one room that wasn't heard throughout the house.

They'd come to take him while she was at work that day. He liked to pretend she hadn't hugged him too long that morning, hadn't told him he should pack some clothes into a backpack because they were going to go on a trip that weekend. It was nicer to think that had just been an unfortunate coincidence. He didn't want to hate her. She'd done her best for him most of the time even though he picked fights with the other kids in the neighborhood and always came home scrapped and bruised and he skipped school more often than he went.

So they'd taken him and his backpack and they'd brought him to the room. They'd shut him up in there with the other kids and those kids had been quiet and beaten and it had been lonely.

And for the longest time they'd let him be while they took the other kids out of the room for testing or therapy or whatever and that had been worse.

Like he'd been brought there not because they'd needed him for something, but instead just to fill a space and it was an awfully lonely space. Then one they had come and they'd taken him and it was worse than he'd imagined it could be. They'd brought him back and he'd been dopey and still trying to shake off the drugs they'd given him and there had been… Chikusa.

It wasn't like he hadn't noticed Chikusa before that day. He hadn't heard him say a word the entire time he was there, but he'd noticed him just the same because he seemed to be listening. All the other kids had tried to ignore him for the most part. He'd talked to them and sometimes he'd gotten their names. This one was Alissa, that one was Tony, that one was also Tony and he started to think maybe they were just having fun with him because what were the chances of there being that many kids named Tony in this one little, bitty room. Mostly though, even if they'd talked to him a little in the beginning, they'd turned away or actively gone out of their way to avoid him after that. And that was okay. He understood the cold shoulder, his cousins had been like that whenever they came to visit Grandma's house. They'd ignore him and go play on the swing outside or play tag down by the lake or watch TV and he was never invited, never welcome, because he was 'that woman's son'. Whatever the hell that meant. So, he was used to it and it didn't matter so much. But….

Chikusa didn't do that. He hadn't known his name then, just thought of him as that small sick kid with the glasses, but he'd stick close to him sometimes especially after they took the kid for treatments and shoved him back into the room looking paler and sicker than usual. He'd stand or sit near him and he'd talk about whatever occurred to him and he thought, maybe, Chikusa didn't mind so much.

At first he'd talked just so he had some company, he'd done the same thing when he lived at Grandma's house. She'd often left him alone because she had to work, so he would talk to himself or the cats. She had two: Oscar, who was an cranky orange tabby cat, and Mister Sock, a nice black kitty who never seemed like she was really all that wild about socks despite her weird name. Usually he'd talk about the weather or the television programs or what they were gonna have for lunch (because he always made extra to feed to the kitties so they would always like him best). Sometimes Mister Sock would come and sit on his lap when it was cold and purr when he pet her and those were the best times.

He made sure not to talk about anything of consequence to the boy with the glasses. He didn't talk about Grandma or Mister Sock or the little house he'd lived in before this or about his parents or even about his cousins. Mainly because it seemed like this was the kind of place that killed the things you loved in front of you just for kicks. So instead he talked about the room and the food and the fact that he hadn't had a bath in what felt like months. His clothes smelled terrible and so did he, so did they all, but no seemed to really care much. He rotated his clothes every week or so because he'd only brought three changes of clothes and that seemed like the best way to keep them any more funky than usual.

One day, they'd hauled him out of the room and led him out to a shower room. The guard, a thin man with a tiny moustache and a scar on his cheek, had grinned as he'd cranked the shower on full blast and shoved him underneath. The water was freezing. Like the well water in the middle of winter when they had to chip off a layer of ice to even get to it. He'd made the mistake of drinking it once, straight out of the bucket and it had been so cold it burned all the way down. This was like that, only all over and he tried to scramble out of it, only to find himself shoved back under the cascading water again and again until his legs wouldn't hold him anymore and he just curled up and in on himself as the cold, cold water continued to pound over him. Eventually he couldn't feel the cold anymore and he couldn't tell he was crying at all.

Then the water burned and the guard laughed. He could hear the laughter even as he screamed and begged them to stop until his throat was sore and his skin was red and aching and he covered his face as much as he could and wasn't even surprised when the water turned to ice again.

He wasn't sure how long it went on, but eventually it stopped. Eventually the water was cut off and he was dragged to his feet and forced to walk, stiff and shaking, back to the room. His socks squelched against the tile floors and he almost slipped countless times and actually hit the ground twice. Everything hurt and he couldn't stop shivering as they shoved him back into the room. He wasn't sure how he managed to make it to the wall, but he did and he leaned there, shivering, until lights out. Once it was dark he changed out of his wet clothes and hung them up on the creepy bunk bed in the corner that no one ever slept on. It was tough to do in the dark, but he managed, though he was pretty sure he stepped on other Tony twice as he ferried those sopping wet clothes across the room.

But even if he did, that was fine by him. Other Tony was kind of a jerk anyway.

So, fuck that guy.

**-ooo-**

Mukuro was waiting for them when they finally emerged from the bathroom an hour later looking a little younger with his hair hanging damp and loose around his shoulders. He frowned at them, "Ken… you wasted like half a roll of gauze and he looks like a badly wrapped mummy."

Chikusa rolled his eyes, but there was really no denying that the bandages were already falling down around his ears. "He tries so hard."

"Shut up. It's harder than it looks and your hairs all… slippy, " Ken grumbled, his cheeks warm as he shoved the unused clothes from the pile Mukuro had left them into one of the backpacks now lying on the bed.

"Chikusa, sit," Mukuro gestured for him to take a seat on the bed and he climbed up onto his knees and began the work of unwrapping and rewrapping Chikusa's head. "We're going to head towards Lucca."

"You've decided what we're gonna do now?"

Mukuro nodded, pressing the long strip of bandage against the stitched wound that ran across Chikusa's head from above his ear around to the back of his skull. "We're going to destroy the mafia."

**-ooo-**

He'd started noticing that on days when the boy with the glasses came back to the room looking really pale or sick he'd lay down closer to him than usual. Not close enough to touch him or even close enough that the others might notice the difference, but he noticed because he was paying attention. Because it was almost like having a friend and it made everything a little less lonely and a little less awful. So, he'd talk and talk and talk about nothing and everything while the boy he'd eventually know as Chikusa lay on the cold floor and listened and it felt good to have someone pay attention even a little bit and it felt like he was helping.

Things went on like that for a while and it wasn't good, nothing about this place was ever good, but it was okay. He had someone who listened to him and he was starting to not notice how rank everyone was, not he thought that was because they actually smelled any better, of course, but instead because he'd been around it long enough that he was just noticing it less. So, for all that he didn't want to be here, it wasn't the worst thing in the world anymore. And for all he knew, maybe he'd smiled once or twice when he'd noticed the kid with the glasses had fallen asleep listening to him. Maybe they'd noticed and that's why they suddenly decided, out of the blue and after weeks of ignoring him, that it was finally his turn to be taken.

**-ooo-**

The night was dark, the stars high above and far away from where they lay in the grass on a hill overlooking their former home. Or at least the dark house that stood over their former home at any rate.

They'd made a little fire and eaten the rest of the pasta and bread they'd brought from the house around it before spreading out blankets to sleep on. Mukuro had already settled down on the far side of the fire and he laid on his back, his arms folded behind his head, looking relatively peaceful for the first time since they'd met that morning.

Chikusa caught Ken's wrist as he walked by to go lay out his own blanket and gave it a single gentle pull before drawing back. It was an invitation, a request, but not a demand. Ken grinned, happy to settle down on the ground beside his friend, to throw his blanket over the both of them and curl close.

He fell asleep almost immediately surrounded by the smell of damp earth and home.

**-ooo-**

He only remembered bits and pieces of it later. He wasn't sure if that was because they kept trying to knock him out or if that was some sort of survival reflex kicking in. After it was over, when they'd ushered him back to the room and the boy's fingers had closed over his sleeve, had reeled him in and taken him to his space. To the little space that boy had carved out for himself and… Ken's things were there. That kid, who didn't talk to him and who only listened and who always pretended he didn't, had gathered up his things- few and sad though they were- and kept them for him.

And something inside his chest felt like it was breaking wide open and he closed his eyes, turning his face into that boy's shoulder. He wanted to know him. Even if they used it against him, even if maybe he was misunderstanding and misreading things, because he was terrible at this kind of stuff and even if it only hurt him in the end. Ken wanted whatever this was, this awkward almost friendship, and he desperately wanted to know this kid. He at least needed to try. "I'm Ken. Ken Joshima," he murmured and it hurt to talk though he wasn't really sure why. "You're…?"

And it probably only took a moment, but it felt like an eternity hung between them as he waited to see if this boy would be just like all the rest.

"Chikusa."

And it was the most beautiful and best name he'd ever heard.

"…what did they do to you?" Chikusa asked and there was a note of concern in his voice and Ken wanted to hug him. To crush that skinny body to his own and keep him close and safe so no one could ever take him away or hurt him. This was all he'd ever, ever wanted. Someone who listened to him, someone who cared what happened to him and Chikusa… he said the name to himself, like a prayer, slowly wrapping his lips around the syllables to be sure he got them exactly right, because this was important, he was important.

In that moment, Chikusa was the most rare and amazing and the best thing ever.

And that's why he didn't want to tell Chikusa about the room. Didn't want him to know about all the places they'd cut him. About the chips and the wires and the programs. About how he'd screamed and cried and begged and how much it had hurt. How much it still hurt and how his body ached like he was having growing pains everywhere all at once.

He didn't want to tell him that he could smell everything now. That he could hear the sound of Chikusa's heart thumping in his chest and the fact that it had the tiniest little murmur to it, like a whisper of foreboding. That he could see him perfectly even in the dark, pale skin and dark hair and that strange tattoo on his cheek. The way he had frowned a little like he was confused.

Didn't want to tell his new friend, his very first real friend, that something was different inside him, like there was some terrible beast slumbering in his chest now and that he was terrified of what it might do when it woke up. No, he didn't want to tell Chikusa any of that. He didn't want to scare him away. Not now. Not ever. Maybe he could tell him everything some day, when he knew him better, when he knew it wouldn't be too much, but not now. Not when this all felt so new and so fragile. Not when he was so very, very tired.

So instead he told him the easier things, because those words didn't hurt to say and he didn't think they'd scare Chikusa away. "Dunno. There were animals, maybe? I don't know. Something about channels and animals and wolves and they did something to my teeth. It hurt, it just… it really hurt. I'm so fucking tired."

"That's a bad word. Sleep here, I'll wake you if they bring food."

He flopped down on the ground, curling around his spare clothes, which stank even worse than he remembered now that he could smell everything. He was still kind of foggy so it took him a minute to realize that Chikusa wasn't laying down, that he was just kind of hovering over him awkwardly and that wasn't what he wanted. "You too."

"Not tired," Chikusa grumbled, but he sat down beside him anyway and that made Ken feel warm all over. He decided to press his luck a little and snagged Chikusa's hand, smooth and warm if a little gritty with the grime of having not bathed to far too long.

"Stay," he whispered, because he wanted him to, because he wanted him close so he knew he was there. He tugged him in, tugged him down, brought him in close and clung to that warm hand until he was sure that Chikusa was going to stick around. He'd never slept close to anyone before, but he could get used to this. He wanted to get used to it.

He felt Chikusa shuffle around, trying to get comfortable at his back, finally shifting and pulling a blanket over them. Ken buried his face in the blanket and it smelled like dirt and Chikusa mostly. He could tell it had belonged to someone else once, a long time ago, but that scent was faint and just barely recognizable and easily ignored. He shivered a little, trying to focus on the warmth of Chikusa at his back and not on the fact that he could still feel all those tiny wounds knitting themselves back together. He thought about telling Chikusa that he smelled amazing that he wanted to stay close to him forever and ever, but that seemed like it might be a weird thing to say. He was still a little off from whatever they'd doped him up with so maybe he'd wait and tell him in the morning if he still wanted to.

Maybe.

**-ooo-**

They'd been three days walking in the woods after they left Esterneo when Ken realized that they were probably going to die in those stupid woods. That they'd done all they'd done and survived the room and the underground and killed all the people and the stupid house and they were going to die in the damn woods.

When they'd set out they'd been cheerful, exhausted from the long day, but happy enough with the wind on their face and the sun beating down on them from overhead. They'd still been pretty upbeat the next morning when they'd woken up from their first night of sleeping on the uneven ground to aching muscles as all those months of inactivity caught up with them, but things had started to go downhill fast after the first full day of walking. It was funny how fast the novelty wore off the adventure when your feet ached and you were rationing water and food because you weren't certain how long it would take you to get somewhere. Mukuro was having a really rough time, looking more tired and more worn down with each passing day, stumbling over roots and rocks as they struggled to find a path that didn't eventually become impossible to follow or lead nowhere. Chikusa wasn't having quite as bad a time of it, but he tired easily and had to lean against trees or Ken to catch his breath when they spent too long stumbling up this hill or that. Apparently he hadn't been the outdoors sort even before they'd been taken and shoved in a room for such a very long time.

The plan, what they had of one, had been to travel mostly by foot to Pistoia and from there they'd take a train. Which Ken had smiled and nodded about and said sounded great even though he had no damn idea if Pistoia was close or a hundred kilometers away. He didn't have a good head for distance and he'd never been much of anywhere except Como because Grandma's house had been near there. He'd probably lived somewhere else when his parents were alive, but he didn't remember much about them much less the place they'd lived. He thought it had been small and blue and messy and warm, but that didn't tell him anything important and might have just been something he thought up besides. So, Como was what he knew and when it came to where Como was in reference to where they'd been held… he didn't know that either. When they got to a town, if they got to a town, they should probably buy a map or something.

He'd asked Chikusa if he knew where they were when they lay huddled beneath the blankets at night, but Chikusa always just shrugged his eyes soft and blurry with exhaustion. Sometimes he wondered if he should use his channels to hunt for small animals or something, but then he realized that even if he managed to catch something they had no idea how to cook it. So they continued to ration what little food they'd been able to take with them from Esterneo and each day was a little worse, a little harder than the last.

After all, they'd been walking through the woods in stolen shoes for the better part of a week and, while Ken's feet and legs ached from the constant activity and the ill-fitting shoes, at least what they did to him helped a little. He didn't try out any of the channels, but his own natural abilities kept him up and moving and kept the blisters from getting too bad. Chikusa and Mukuro weren't so lucky and he used the first aid kit to patch them up each night (which he was getting better at though he still couldn't change the bandages around Chikusa's head worth a damn) and they began to rest more and more frequently to give themselves time to heal rather than just pushing on ahead. But while the extra rest seemed to be helping Chikusa and he seemed to be slowly adapting to their new routine, Mukuro still just looked worse and worse each day. It took Ken a while to figure out that the reason for that was that Mukuro didn't actually sleep so much as he just sort of occasionally passed out from exhaustion and woke up screaming himself hoarse. It's not like any of them were strangers to nightmares, he was pretty sure their screams and thrashing scared off all the predators they might have otherwise had problems with. But as bad as his and Chikusa's nightmares were, Mukuro's seemed way worse and far more consistent. Once Ken was watching and paying attention, he figured out that Mukuro only actually managed two hours of broken sleep a night, if that.

A week after they'd left Esterneo behind, he'd woken up in the middle of the night to find Mukuro pitching sticks into the fire, which crackled merrily under the constant attention. He knew it was late and Chikusa was still sound asleep beside him, so he slipped out of the nest of blankets they slept in and shuffled over to stand next to Mukuro.

"Ken?" He inquired, his voice soft. The shadows under his eyes were deep and darker still with each passing day, bags carrying luggage carrying steamer trunks.

"Can't sleep still?" And as opening gambits went, it probably wasn't the best, but Mukuro shrugged and answered him easily enough.

"You've seen what happens when I do." He'd have to have been blind, deaf and miles from camp to miss it, after all.

"Wanna talk about it?"

A shrug; another stick tossed to the hungry fire. "What's to talk about? Someone killed me while I was sleeping. It doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy about it."

"You remember…?"

"No. It's more like muscle memory. It's hard to explain. It's like ever time I lie down and try to sleep I can't shake this feeling of dread, like if I go to sleep I won't wake up. Sometimes I have nightmares about the feel of big hands wrapped around my throat so tight I can't move, can't breathe, can only die." Mukuro chuckled, shaking his head and tossing another stick on the fire, causing it to flare briefly. "It makes me… anxious, I suppose. It's difficult to relax that way."

"It might be better if you don't lie down to sleep," Chikusa called, his voice soft and heavy with sleep. "Try to sleep sitting up? It's not as vulnerable a position."

Mukuro smiled, just a tiny twitch of his lips, but it was closest Ken had seen him get to a real, genuine smile since they'd met. "Maybe so. You should both get some rest, we still have a long way to go and we have much to do when we get there."

When they finally arrived in a town a week later, it was almost a surprise. They had something like half a package of crisps left between them and most of a single bottle of water and it had been raining nonstop for two days. They were wet, they were exhausted and they were just going through the motions of putting one foot in front of the other. Ken managed to take a dozen steps before he realized he was walking on pavement rather than tripping through dead leaves and over fallen tree limbs. He stopped dead and turned back to look at Chikusa and Mukuro who looked as shocked as he felt.

Mukuro quickly ushered them back to the edge of the forest. They were lucky it was early evening and they'd stumbled into a quiet part of the town. They probably looked like orphan refugees from a training camp for zombies. Especially with Chikusa's unevenly cut and shaved hair and hugely obvious scars on all of them. He wasn't sure Mukuro was up to casting illusions to cover all their rough appearances. He'd been sleeping a little better since he'd started leaning against trees when he napped, but he still looked like hell warmed over. "Stay here," Mukuro said, dropping his bag beside them. "I'll go find us something to eat and somewhere to stay the night."

They both nodded their consent tiredly. What else could they do?

So, they'd flopped down and leaned against each other, back to back, just within the forest. Too damn tired to care about the light drizzle that managed to still fall over them through the tree cover.

Ken hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep until something hard hit him lightly in the chest and fell into his lap. He blinked sleepily and gazed down at the apple in his lap for a long moment before picking it up and glancing up to find Mukuro crouched in front of him smiling and taking a large bite out of his own apple. He could Chikusa already munching away on his own apple at his back. "Hurry up and eat. I found a place for us to stay. The owners are supposed to be out of town for a week and no one is watching the house while they're gone so we can stay there for a little while."

**-ooo-**

The house was nice. It was small and cozy and the water was hot and Chikusa stayed in the shower for the better part of an hour as Ken and Mukuro raided the closets for fresh clothes that might not be too big. Ken pulled a natty orange hat out of the back of a closet and waved it triumphantly.

"What the hell is that? Take it out back and light it on fire," Mukuro replied, glaring at the poorly knitted monstrosity.

Ken grinned, "No way! It's for Chikusa. That way he can hide the scar if he wants until his hair grows back out."

Mukuro snorted, shaking his head, "Good luck getting it on him."

"Shut up, it's totally awesome. He's gonna love it."

Unsurprisingly, Chikusa did not love it.

He hated it and tried to throw it out the window twice before Ken managed to wrestle it onto his head. "Just till you find one you like more, right?"

Chikusa glared at him and shoved his glasses further up on his nose. "You better find something soon," he grumbled, tugging the hat off and tucking it in with the clothes he'd set aside to wear tomorrow. "Jerk."

For the first time in months they could sleep on a bed. Something none of them ended up actually doing as the bed was too soft and Ken just tossed and turned and Chikusa finally kicked him hard enough to shove him right out of it and onto the carpeted floor below. He'd been all prepared to be mad, but before he had a chance to get up off the floor and start yelling, Chikusa was already following him down dragging the blankets and pillows with him.

Mukuro glared at them briefly from his position in a chair by the door, but he closed his eyes again as soon as it was obvious a fight wasn't going to break out after all. And that was how they passed their first night together in town. Mukuro fast asleep in a chair and the two of them sleeping on the plush carpet and it was a thousand times better than either the bed or the concrete floor of that room or the uneven ground. It was just the right mix of soft and firm and for the first time in far too long, Ken felt comfortable and safe. It was a nice feeling to be surrounded by family and safe even if it was only for a little while.

**-ooo-**

They were hurting him.

And all he could feel was rage and all he could hear were Chikusa's screams echoing down the halls because they'd given him perfect fuckinghearing. So there was no way he wouldn't hear it. No way he could miss it and they almost certainly knew that. The bastards. It felt good to curse. If he'd been back at his grandma's house, he'd have gotten the back of her hand for it, but he wasn't that kid anymore. That kid hadn't been able to hear shit. Hadn't hurt all over, hadn't been a freak like he was now, hadn't had a friend who needed him. Needed him to help him. To get through this stupid fucking door and kill whoever was hurting him.

Because he wanted to kill them, wanted to rip them apart, and that was weird and new and probably should have made him feel bad or at least worried or maybe guilty, but it didn't. He didn't have room for bad or for worried or even for guilty. Not when he was this angry. The other kids watched him with wide eyes and panicked breathing and they whimpered like he was totally nuts and they'd just realized they were locked in a room with him. So maybe they couldn't hear Chikusa screaming at all, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter they thought of him, they didn't matter. What mattered was getting out of this room, what mattered was that they were hurting him.

He beat at the door, kicked at the hinges, smashed his fists and broke his knuckles open again and again against the handles. Most of the scraps and cuts healed up almost immediately, but that didn't mean they didn't hurt. He just didn't care enough to stop because he couldn't hear those sobbing terrible screams and not try to get to him, try to help. Even when Chikusa finally fell silent, he kept trying because he knew that they were doing bad things to him even if he wasn't awake to feel them anymore. So, he kept working at the door even though the best he'd managed was a couple dents until finally, finally the lock clicked and someone pushed the door open.

The guard who stood in the doorway shoved him hard, sending him tumbling back across the hard concrete floor. He hit the old bunk bed hard and growled, a low warning rumble in the back of his throat, as he climbed back to his feet and turned back to face the man who stood between him and Chikusa. This guard was a little different than the others he'd seen. He was taller for one thing, broader, his skin was paler and his hair was lighter than even Ken's own. When he grinned, and he did grin, it was wide and mean and Ken couldn't help but notice that some of his teeth were gold and they glistened in the bright lights of the room. He grinned at him like Ken was the funniest thing he'd seen in a while and when he spoke his Italian was strange and broken, his accent weird. "You wanna go, boy? Think you're tough because our Famiglia give you claws? Made you a little fast, a little strong? Huh, little wolf? You come. Leo will show you the difference between men and little wolves."

What could he do but charge the guard? Chikusa was still out there and he was stuck in here with one giant jerk of a guard between them. So, he ran at the man and got a fist in the gut for his trouble and he felt sick as pain surged through his belly. Then a second blow hit him in the eye hard and his world blackened around the edges. The pain in his stomach was a pale echo of the agony surging through his head as a third blow caught him in the nose and he heard the wet crunch of it breaking. He started laughing as he hit the floor because it hurt so much. It hurt more than anything and he was still climbing back to his feet, stumbling and weaving and there was blood gushing from his nose. He wiped at it absently, laughing harder at the flash of pain when his hand brushed against his broken, shattered nose.

He lunged at the man again, because any stupid thing that was worth doing once was worth doing twice. A booted foot lashed out, catching him in the cheek and snapping his head to the side hard and sending him back to the floor again, his already bruised and broken arms and hand and legs and feet scrapping against the rough concrete as he fell. The guard stepped into the room chuckling and when Ken lifted his head to glare at him with, his sight blurring and unfocused, he thought he was grinning again. Maybe he'd just never stopped.

"I like your spirit, little wolf. Be glad you are important to our Famiglia, otherwise Leo kill you now to keep other stupid boys from getting ideas. Your little friend will be back soon enough, eh? That is promise. You hear him cry, you hear him scream and you worry. He's in pain, you worry, terrible pain and you are right, but it is necessary. Pain is price of progress, price of becoming. Your boy is important to Famiglia just like you, just like other, just like rest. You gonna make us strong again, make us great. You should feel blessed for chance we give you."

Ken spat out blood and bits of broken teeth and wondered what the fuck kind of family did this to their kids and called it a blessing.

Assholes.

He hadn't realized he'd said that last bit aloud until Leo the guard's foot crashed into his chin and darkness swallowed him. Then he didn't wonder anything at all for a good long while. When he woke at last, jaw aching and face sore- his eyes already so swollen and bruised it was difficult to do more than squint- it was to the sound of the door swinging open and hitting the wall. Leo had been there, framed in the doorway that seemed smaller with him standing in it. He was grinning again as he hauled Chikusa's limp form up and tossed him into the room. Ken managed to shove his body up and dive forward fast enough to catch him before he slammed into the concrete floor bandaged head first, but only just. Only just and Leo laughed, a belly-deep roar of a sound that shook his large form and made Ken's already aching head scream for mercy. "See, little wolf, your Famiglia keeps promises."

Then the door was slamming shut and Ken choked back a sob as his body continued to knit itself back together. With Leo gone, he curled around Chikusa's unconscious form protectively though every movement made his whole body ache and scream. "Sorry," he whispered as the sound of footsteps echoed in the hallway, even though Chikusa couldn't hear him. "Sorry."

**-ooo-**

Ken woke with a start, reaching out automatically for Chikusa. For the warmth and safety of his friend even though he didn't need to touch him to know he was okay. He thought if he tried he could hear his heart beat, hear the whisper of his steady breath from miles. Which was a nice thought even if it probably wasn't true. Chikusa mumbled something in his sleep that sounded a lot like 'troublesome idiot' and Ken smiled. He buried his face against Chikusa's thin shoulder, curling his fingers in his sleeve as he drifted back to sleep.

They weren't there anymore. No more terrible basement rooms or scared kids. They were out and they were free and though they still smelled a bit like blood and death, he could live with that, because the smell of home and wet earth and damp grass and the lingering scent of rain was everywhere around him. He liked these times the best. When they were between goals and all together like this. These were the best times. They'd attacked the Volpe Famiglia last week and he'd killed seven people. Chikusa had killed nine and Mukuro had killed a lot more. He thought sometimes, during these times between, that he should maybe feel bad about that. About what they were doing, but then he remembered that room and those people and it felt like what they were doing was necessary, vital. The mafia had created them as surely as Esterneo had and the mafia had to pay for that. Had to pay for monsters and dead children and, mostly, just for existing. Maybe they were crazy, as crazy as the Esterneo had been, and maybe someday someone would stop them, but until then they'd keep on moving. Keep on doing what was necessary for them.

They'd wiped out the Volpe Famiglia and all the other little Famiglia in the region in one fell swoop and now they were moving on. To Lucca, to start the long game as Mukuro had told them he had a plan now. Knew what he needed to do and they would help, would support him, in any way they could. It wouldn't be easy, but they'd manage together as they always did.

They weren't safe, not really, and things weren't perfect, but they were okay. They were good enough. He had Chikusa and they had Mukuro and that was enough. And for right now they were between jobs and the world was quiet and Chikusa was warm beside him and Mukuro was close by. He could hear the crackle of the fire that was Mukuro counting the hours till dawn, he still didn't sleep all that much but he seemed to have made his peace with that and often stayed up late to keep an eye out for trouble. Ken kind of liked that, liked the feeling of knowing that Mukuro was looking out for them.

It was just nice to have someone watch over them for once.

**-ooo-**

Mukuro tossed the sack of apples down on the ground between them, causing Ken to curse and scuttle backwards like a crab before tripping over his tangled limbs and crushing in a heap several feet away. "Motherfucker bastard son of a bitch!" He hadn't even heard him coming, hadn't smelled him either. Mukuro was getting scary good with his powers. He just wished he would stop fucking using them to sneak up on him for kicks.

"Fraidy cat," Chikusa murmured, a smile on his lips as he glanced away from the pile of unfortunate that was Ken, to the bag of apples. "For us?"

"You're hungry, right?" Mukuro replied, crouching down beside them as Ken inched his way back over.

"Yeah sure, where'd you get all these?"

"I was going to steal them, but my new employer bought them for me instead. Apparently he's a bit of a soft touch for tough street kids," Mukuro replied, his smile big and broad and triumphant. "Eat up."

* * *

**NOTES:**

The Vongola incident referred to by Mukuro mid-chapter is the Cradle Incident, in case anyone is curious. It lined up pretty well on the timeline so I rolled with it.

NEXT CHAPTER: Prison! Otherwise known as the chapter where the past attempts to catch up with the present, fails miserably and settles for covering 2001-2002. Will also mark the first chapter that is told from the perspective of several different characters. Shiny.


	5. What We Were

_"It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another."_  
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

**THEN**

THE GANG  
NORTHERN ITALY  
2000

**LANCIA**

Ken dove at the bars with a snarl, claws lashing out at the guard who cursed and barely managed to move out of the way quickly enough to avoid them. The dog biscuit he'd been tapping against the cell door hit the ground and broke into pieces. "See how fucking funny you think it is when I'm scooping your guts out and making you eat them, you rat bastard son of a bitch," Ken spat at the guard before shoving away from the door to pace the cell restlessly.

"Run away now," Chikusa murmured, glaring at the guard coldly as he slipped a slim leg through the bars to crush the remains of the dog biscuit with the heel of his boot.

Lancia sighed from his bunk in the corner of the cell as the guard picked himself up and scrambled out of sight, his hurried steps echoing down the long corridor. "You know you shouldn't have done that, Ken. They'll just be watching us all that much closer now."

Ken frowned, his nose twitching irritably, still whipping back and forth across the small cell like the caged animal he was. "I fucking know that, okay? Of course, I know that. Sorry, I'm not as good as you at reigning in my emotions, Mr. Perfect."

Teenagers were _exhausting_, Lancia decided, rolling his eyes and flipping back over on his bunk to stare up at the damp stone ceiling above him. Of course, he should know that better than anyone since he was sharing his head with one half the time. Not that his own personal exhausting, evil, body-swiping, murderous teenager was all that much like either of the boys that shared his cell. Chikusa and Ken were… good kids. Loyal, guarded, jaded and killers same as he and Mukuro, but… good. He was never- and probably never would be- absolutely certain whether his affection for them was genuine or had been grown from some seed Mukuro planted. He still didn't have a great handle on exactly how Mukuro's powers really worked, but- however it might have begun- he did like those kids. They reminded him of the other kids he'd known when he was growing up and, sometimes, of the kid he'd thought Mukuro was… before.

Before Mukuro made him kill everyone he ever loved….

Well.

Almost everyone.

He mourned his family, would mourn his family and feel the guilt and rage at what he'd done to them until the end of his days, but... these boys were his charge now. And even Mukuro, for all his many, many faults, was difficult to hate.

_Well, I suppose I _did _save your life._

_Oh, fuck off, brat. Do you really think I'd have been looking at suicide as a viable option in the first place if it weren't for you?_

_Details, details._

Lancia frowned and took a deep shuddering breath. There was no point in having this conversation again. They'd had it so many times that he was beginning to think of it less as a conversation and more as a script that they practiced with each other every so often. What the hell was the point anyway? He'd already resigned himself to this life, to taking care of these kids. Even if Mukuro was a spiteful murdering bastard, and he was, the other two weren't so bad and he'd spent enough time with Mukuro in his head that he…

Well, it wasn't that he liked the kid, obviously. He didn't. He'd never be able to really like the kid after everything he'd done, but… he didn't really want anything bad to happen to him either. For better or for worse, Mukuro was all he had left of his family.

So, he had decided on his own that he was going to look out for them, at least for now. And that's what he was going to do.

Though, admittedly, it had been a hell of a lot easier to do that and not want to beat them to death with their own shoes when they'd been smaller and cuter and less fucking _moody_, fucking _annoying_, fucking _teenagers_.

_That's so sweet, Lancia, I didn't realize you cared._

_Shut it, brat. You saw what just happened didn't you?_

_…Yes. I'm arranging for the guard to be transferred to duty in solitary. I'll teach him the importance of manners._

Lancia felt a shiver tremble up his spine at the frigid rage in Mukuro's mental voice. He understood the rage, but…

_You shouldn't kill him. He's scared of Ken now. He'll be more aggressive in attempting to harass him and he'll leave himself open._

There was no answer, but he could feel the deep, fathomless depths of Mukuro's disapproval.

He sighed and slanted a glance back towards where Ken was still pacing furiously while Chikusa spoke to him in low tones. Each pass across the cell was a little slower, a little calmer, until he finally stopped altogether leaning his forehead against the bars beside Chikusa. He glanced away back at the ceiling, _I know, okay, I get it and I don't like it either, but if we manage to escape it'll be worth it. Just look at him._

Lancia rolled on his side so he could look again at where Chikusa and Ken lingered against the bars. Chikusa's expression was hidden behind the fall of his dark hair, gleaming naked and unnatural in the flickering yellow light of the fluorescents without his habitual beanie. They'd taken Chikusa's hat away during processing, had spent ten minutes examining his head in detail in order to take pictures and note down all the thick scars hidden beneath his hair for his file. Lancia had held Ken's shoulders tightly to keep him from attacking the intake officer. They'd both just had to stand and watch, quivering with rage, as Chikusa stood stock-still before the guard, his eyes squeezed shut and his body trembling with the strain of not moving or running or killing this stranger who slid indelicate fingers across the old wounds he usually kept hidden beneath those terribly warm hats.

Three months later and he was finally getting used to seeing Chikusa without the hat, but he could tell that the lack bothered him. Could see it in the way he sometimes brought a hand up to straighten it or pull it down before realizing there was nothing there anymore. Ken had managed to keep the one cartridge by wearing it in and pretending that the wolf channel was his normal appearance. It said something about the mafia in general that the guards hadn't even blinked at his unruly appearance, as if it were a perfectly normal thing for a boy to look that savage, to have those claws and teeth and that tattoo on his cheek. When he slipped the cartridge out at night he had to be careful how he slept so that the lack of tattoo wouldn't be obvious.

"I know, I'm sorry, it's… it's harder to control like this. You know, when it's all the time," Ken murmured, his voice louder than Chikusa's, loud enough to carry across the cell. "And that fucking guy making jokes, I just…."

Chikusa was nodding his understanding, tentative fingers brushing against the wolf channel symbol on Ken's cheek, sliding up and back distractedly through Ken's bristly blond hair. Leaning forward to bring their foreheads to rest together.

Lancia sighed, turning his attention back to Mukuro. _He's barely holding it together. He only takes that cartridge out to sleep as it is; he's that freaked out by the idea of being caught defenseless. And Chikusa really ain't much better. The only way I've even been able to convince him to sleep is by staying up and keeping watch for them half the damn night. And even then it's only because Ken insists on sleeping in his bunk and won't go to sleep until Chikusa does. I don't know what's going on in Chikusa's head, but it isn't good._

_He hates being this out of control,_ Mukuro answered after a long pause, _he worries he'll wake up and everything he... everything that belongs to him will be gone._

_Ah,_ he hadn't really expected an answer, but it helped to know even if he wasn't quite sure what the hell to do about it. _I don't pretend to have any idea what the hell happened to you little bastards to make you the way you are, but you and I both know they aren't gonna be able to do this shit long term. I mean we've been here three months and Ken's already climbing the walls and Chikusa thinks the guards are going to attack us in the night. Things will probably just get worse once they decide to try to integrate us into general population. I mean, maybe they'll get yard time and maybe that'll help with Ken, but they barely trust me and they've known me for years now. They put them in with fifty other Mafioso that you have no control over and we'll be lucky if they only kill the ones who start something. You can't influence them to keep us here and separate from the rest indefinitely without someone getting suspicious. You know that. And the only advantage we have right now is they don't really know what you can do._

_I know._ Mukuro's voice was soft, reluctant. _All right, I'll leave the guard in place for now. Until I have a plan. Ken is not to be harmed, got it?_

_I don't need you to tell me that, kid. I'll look out for them, you just get to work on getting your shit together and getting a plan up and running so we can get the hell out of here._

_I don't need you to tell me that, Mr. Lancia_, Mukuro replied, snottily.

Lancia rolled his eyes as Mukuro's presence flounced off back to his own damn mind.

Fucking _teenagers_.

**-ooo-**

**MUKURO**

If he was honest with himself, and he did try to be, he was almost always afraid.

He covered it well, he thought, pushed it down and to the back of his mind because he was busy and had far greater concerns and no time to waste on such things, but that didn't banish it. Fear was the one constant of his life, of all his lives. Fear of death, fear of imprisonment, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of acceptance… it hardly mattered what the fear was, it was the feeling that was the constant. That great, wet, dark, creeping monstrous dread that haunted his nights and days and slowly eroded those few precious and increasingly rare moments of dreamless slumber he managed.

In some ways he was grateful for it. That fear kept him sharp, kept him moving, made him good and better and great at being an illusionist and sharper when it came to manipulating others. It made him brilliant at ferreting out the hopes and dreams and weaknesses of others and turning them to his advantage. Knowing what pressure to apply and where to apply it in order to best realize his goals. In those ways, fear was a valuable companion for all that it was unwanted.

It was easier now. Prison had not been kind to them and he despised it to the very depths of his tattered, angry soul, but it had afforded him an opportunity. The solitude that his confinement allowed him was invaluable in learning to channel that fear usefully. It was a place where he didn't have to worry so much about accidentally hurting them, because sometimes he wanted to. So very badly that he could taste it on the back of his tongue. He could see with that clarity the fear gave him what it would take to tear them apart, to shatter them utterly and rip their tender broken hearts from them.

Sometimes it was all he could do to keep them from unwittingly dashing themselves upon the rocks of his cruelty. All it would take was a nudge and Ken would lose control, would slip and Chikusa would pay the price in physical pain and Ken would self-destruct from guilt and self-recrimination. They were so delicate, so painfully fragile. They could hurt anyone, kill anyone and not care, unless it was one of their own. They'd never survive hurting each other. And he knew this, had known it from the moment he met them, standing in the operating room where he'd been born, with their scars and their pain and their hate. He'd known even then that they were his.

That they and he were just the same and that was what he clung to in those moments when the urge to destroy them was almost overwhelming, those moments when Ken hugged him too tightly or Chikusa became a silent brace that held him up when he would have fallen. He was afraid of so many, many things, but he feared nothing as much as he feared himself. As much as he feared what he might do unfettered by his ties to those two. And it scared the hell out of him how much a part of him longed for that. To be free of the soft tethers by which they unknowingly held him, bound him. To be free to kill and maim and die without fear of repercussions to himself or to those he valued. Because, if he were free, he would have nothing and no one he valued more than the love of the slaughter. He dreamt sometimes of how much fun it would be to be mad with the power he wielded, to ride every darkest desire of every shallow, hateful mafia heart to its bitter end. To give them everything they feared and everything they desired all at once and allow them a moment to savor the joy and the horror and pain of it before he cut them down.

Half of him gloried in the thought of what could be just as half of him was horrified that such darkness existed within him.

It was enough to drive anyone mad, really.

And he knew that- even on his best days- he held to what passed for sanity by only the most slender and fragile of threads.

This was what they had made him, after all.

A thousand contradictions and six terrible lives burned and branded into the body of a child. Sometimes he had to hold his hand up. To stare at how small it was, how delicate and pale, in order to remind himself that he was not any of those people, those half-remembered lives that jostled and jockeyed for position within him. He was not that girl, bleeding out and pleading to see her son just once. He was not that loyal servant who betrayed one master for another and died for his pains. He was not the woman with her hands buried in a man's chest cavity feeling the same savage joy of any predator enjoying their kill. He wasn't any of them or any of the others either. He was himself. He was the boy who had pulled himself together from the clinging sewage of seven lives and killed everyone who had hurt him. Who had hurt those he valued. Who was in the process of killing everyone inadvertently responsible for the circumstances that had given birth to the monster that he was. He had set his sights upon the whole of the mafia and they would all die and then, perhaps, he would be content. Perhaps then this great yawning hole within him would be filled and satisfied by the blood and tears of those that had wronged them. Once it was done he would be safe even if he would never be sane or whole or capable of anything but destruction.

Maybe on that day he wouldn't have to worry that he would break them by holding them too tightly.

That he would break others as he had broken Lancia.

He hadn't enjoyed playing runner for that Caccitaore Famiglia, but he had learned many important things doing so. It had taught him the value of patience, it had improved his ability to manipulate, to pretend to be something and someone he was not and for all that it had been an invaluable experience even if he'd hated every moment of it. Ever moment it had kept him away from Chikusa and Ken, seeing them only to drop off supplies to keep them well and safe while they experimented and learned to use their own abilities. They would have been happy to help if he'd asked them to, wanted them to, but he'd decided it needed to be done this way. There were skills at his disposal that could only be employed through practical application and practice. And if they were going to take down the whole of the mafia, he needed to be able to use every skill at his disposal.

He'd set his plans carefully. He had selected that junkie family and sent their son off running to a better life- or if not better then at least different- with plenty of cash in his pocket and a fragment of illusion that would lead him to believe he had nothing to return to in Lucca even if he should wish to come back. It had been a simple matter to take the boy's place, they were of a size and similar enough in appearance that with a few mild illusions he was able to become their son in every way that mattered to them. He'd understood soon enough that all that truly required was that he be a warm body upon which they could vent their frustrations.

Truly this insignificant world wasn't worthy of its continued existence.

But he'd endured them, because that's what the plan required. He'd even allowed the beatings, because he needed to know what that felt like. Needed the realism to help his act become believable, become real. He needed to learn how to take a hit and neither Ken nor Chikusa were willing to help with that and the memories he carried from other lives of such injuries were pale and vague when he reached for them, when he actually had a use for them. It lasted weeks and when the time was right he'd killed that man with his stinking breath and angry fists and allowed Matteo Salvatore to rescue him.

Everything had gone perfectly to plan.

Until Lancia.

It wasn't as if he didn't know about Lancia. He'd heard plenty about him from the enforcers he'd worked alongside as a runner and from his own research into the Famiglia before the three of them had traveled to Lucca. He'd heard of his fierce reputation, of the many battles he'd won, of his legendary loyalty to the Famiglia that had taken him in when he was just some orphan on the streets of Lucca. That had, of course, been what had given him the idea of how to infiltrate the Cacciatore Famiglia in the first place. He'd heard all these things about him and so he'd felt like he'd known what to expect from the strongest man in Northern Italy. He'd thought little enough about him beyond the fact that Lancia would probably be the perfect vessel to use when he destroyed the Cacciatore. It appealed to his sense of humor to use their strongest member to wipe them from the face of the Earth. Then a quick stab and he'd finish off Lancia and be back with Ken and Chikusa all the sooner for it with little fuss.

Unfortunately, the reality of Lancia had been very different from what he'd pictured. But then there had been precious little about his induction into the Cacciatore household that hadn't been more complicated than he'd initially planned. The largest contributing factor in that had just simply been that he hadn't realized how exhausted he would be at the end of that very, very long day.

He'd had to incite a fight with the man whose son he'd been pretending to be, endure this latest beating while still sore and bruised from the last few and manage to kill him while maintaining the illusions that made him look like their son until the last moment. That had been challenging enough by the most lax of standards, but then there'd been the necessity of concealing the little oddities of regular appearance from the Cacciatore as they took him to their headquarters. He'd managed to get away with pretending to sleep most of the journey so he could drop the illusions on everything but the trident strapped to his side. Still, by the time he'd arrived at their headquarters everything hurt. From the painful twinge in his chest where that waste of space bastard had managed to land a solid kick to the awful ache in his shoulder from the kick of the shotgun he'd used to blow that dirty, rotten son of a bitch's head off. His own head throbbed from the strain of building and maintaining so many illusions for so long and when they finally arrived at their destination it took him far too long to realize that the car had stopped, that someone was asking him to get out.

He almost fell out of the car, flinching away when the old man reached out to him, scrambling forward to the house half-blind because that was preferable. He didn't want to be coddled, didn't need help from them. So, he'd weaved drunkenly across the drive and up the path and had been vaguely surprised to find that the old man had reached the door before him and was holding it open so that he could stumble into the manor. His damp sneakers squeaked against the tiles of the entryway and he found himself staring down dully at the emblem of the Cacciatore that was emblazoned in black across those tiles. Was there some sort of bylaw for being a mafia Famiglia that required them to make their shitty logo the first thing people saw when entering their headquarters?

He wasn't sure how long he stood there, staring vaguely down at that emblem feeling weak and sick with his vision shot through with squiggly lines before he felt warm, scarred hands catch him by the arms and steady him. Strange perhaps that he should notice the ridges of a hundred scars as they were pressed against his bare arms by those big hands, but he did. They were rough and interesting and they gave him something to focus on besides the pain and the losing battle he was fighting, a battle that was almost certainly going to end with him vomiting all over someone's fancy dress shoes. So he counted the feel of those scars against his skin and let himself be guided in away from the emblem and through the house to another room with far better lighting than the first and different tile that didn't against which his shoes to squeak quite so much. Allowed those hands to push him down gently but firmly into a chair while a deep, rough voice told him to just stay there for a minute.

He opened his eyes, a little surprised to find that he'd even closed them in the first place, to find himself sitting in a kitchen. A kitchen that was warm and welcoming and not so different in appearance from that kitchen in the Esterneo house where he had shared his first meal with Ken and Chikusa. It was nice, nostalgic almost, and he began to come slowly back to himself as the man who'd brought him into the kitchen started slapping bandages and ointment and towels onto the counter beside him. He was a gruff looking man, tall and broad in the shoulders with many scars, not much more than a teenager. He had a thunderous expression, dark circles under his eyes and a couple of tattoos like claw marks across one cheek. His suit was dark and neatly pressed like those worn by everyone else in the family he'd met, though the outfit didn't really seem to suit him as it did them. Mukuro could see the outline of a shoulder holster; see the butt of the gun tucked in it as he moved. All this might have seemed intimidating if it hadn't been for his eyes.

There was something about his eyes that made him seem… gentle, soft maybe. There was a kind of haunted understanding there as if he had some inkling what Mukuro had seen and done and been through. It was both better and worse than the looks of pity the other guards and the old man had been shooting him since he'd gotten in the car. Better because there was nothing that he hated more then the pity of an enemy and worse because… he didn't want to like this man. Didn't want to like anything about this place.

The man pulled one of the other bar stools in front of him with a loud, scrapping sound and flopped down on the padded top. He snagged a towel and dunked it in the water in the bowl before holding it up in front of Mukuro's tired eyes. "Look, I ain't gonna hurt you, but this might sting a little. You understand me? I may look scary, but I'd never hurt a kid."

"You don't look scary at all," Mukuro had answered in a soft voice, still a little hollow and empty of emotion. At this point he couldn't even be bothered to try, it was just easier to go with what he actually thought and felt. Later he could lie or cover if he needed to, but for now he just needed to be. "You have kind eyes. I know you won't hurt me."

And even as he said it he knew it was true.

The man's answering smile was bright and huge and it transformed his whole face making him look younger and less worn. That man's joy filled up some of the empty places inside of Mukuro with something like warmth and he felt vaguely ill again as the man began to tentatively dab the towel against his wounds. He hated this. Hated this gentleness. He didn't want to be treated like this, but… he was so very, very tired. He wanted to go _home_. Wanted to curl up near Ken and Chikusa and listen to them bicker and not be here in this place with this walking dead man and his unnecessary kindness.

But there was the plan to consider. This was the plan and he'd come too far to just abandon it now because he was a little tired and a little homesick and someone was being nice to him. He wasn't a baby. He wasn't weak. He could handle this. He just needed to rest, that was all. If he couldn't go home he at least needed to rest, that much was perfectly obvious.

He let the man who'd taken care of him guide him upstairs to a guest room. It was at the top of too many stairs and the man's room was apparently just down the way and if he needed anything he just needed to pick up the phone and one of the duty guards would answer. The bedroom was so big, so much bigger than the dirty little room he'd been staying in these past few months. So much bigger than the rooms he'd shared with Chikusa and Ken for so long before that. He stood there weaving back and forth in this huge, unfamiliar place and he'd found himself asking the man if he wouldn't mind staying for a little while.

Why did he ask that?

It wasn't as if he were a child. It wasn't as if he had ever needed someone to watch over him.

"Sure, kid," the man replied, ruffling Mukuro's hair.

Oh, and how he wanted to hate that too. That off-hand, overly familiar gesture, but it was… nice. Comforting, maybe.

Clearly he was unwell and out of sorts and he needed to rest and focus and remember himself. He was not a child. He was Mukuro Rokudo and Mukuro Rokudo had no use for any of this.

"Look, I'll tell you what, kid. How about you go get cleaned up and get changed. They put your stuff up here earlier so there should be some clothes and whatever else you need in the bathroom. I'll stand guard out here in the hall. Nobody will come in here if you don't want them to, okay? And if you need anything, all you gotta do is yell and I'll hear you. I'll stay here as long as you need me. You don't gotta worry about anything, kid, you're safe now."

"Okay," he whispered, but it wasn't okay. None of this was okay. He was going to destroy this family. This man had to die, no matter how nice he was or how kind he was, because none of them were really like that. They all had to die, all of them, and he wasn't foolish enough even then, even so close to the beginning of his course, that he didn't realize he was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But the elimination of the mafia could not be done by half measures, by picking and choosing and ferreting out good elements from bad.

No, the mafia was a cancer that needed to be cut out and burned to ash until no trace of it remained, no trace left to fester and grow anew. Even the ones he liked, even the ones who were kind. There couldn't be exceptions.

Only then would they be safe, only then would it be right, only then could he turn his attention to the rest of the world.

But perhaps…

Perhaps it was okay to keep this one just… just for a little while. Just until he got his bearings back and had to eliminate this family. Just until then.

So he smiled, tentative and breakable, and nodded, "Thank you, Mister…"

"Lancia. Just call me Lancia, kid. Go on now, I'll keep watch," he replied giving Mukuro a gentle push in the direction of the bathroom before turning and walking out of the room. He closed the door behind him so that it was only open the barest of cracks. Hadn't seemed to notice the way Mukuro had frozen, how the shock of that name had lanced through him and kept him unable to move forward.

Lancia.

This kind, smiling man volunteering to guard a child's door was the strongest man in all of Northern Italy.

This was the fearsome Lancia.

It was like a terrible joke.

This was the man he had planned to use to destroy this family.

But… plans could be altered, of course. He didn't have to use him. There were plenty of other strong fighters in Cacciatore that he didn't know, who weren't so… kind. So maybe he could use one of them and when it came time… when it came time to eliminate them, he'd kill Lancia first. Then he'd never know, never have to know, how his kindness had been repaid

Sometimes he felt as if he should apologize for that decision.

For valuing his amiable nature, for wanting to stay close to him and- most especially- for somehow becoming someone Lancia valued. Because it had been clear from those first days that Lancia viewed him as a worthwhile investment of his time and someone to be treated well. It had amazed him a little that someone that strong could be that… gentle. That good. So, he'd found himself seeking him out, at first as a curiosity and later because he genuinely enjoyed his company. He was a funny sort of man and he seemed to enjoy Mukuro's company as well.

Most adults in the mafia treated children as an annoyance or a burden or with a grudging polite goodwill that he always found more offensive than the honesty of the other two approaches. Lancia was different… or possibly just more insightful as he had made a point of treating Mukuro as if he were someone special for the very beginning. That had been… nice. Lancia had volunteered to train him, had been the first person since Ken and Chikusa to make him not want to hurt him for sport just by virtue of existing. It had been such a pleasant and unexpected change of pace.

He truly hadn't meant to break him, to hurt him, in the beginning. He'd just… enjoyed that unfamiliar feeling of being looked after, protected.

The problem, of course, ended up being that because he was training alongside Lancia and spent so little time around the other family members that it had just been more practical to practice his possession on Lancia. Plus… the standard possession- the kind he could do without the bullets- hurt. It hurt every time because even when you were trusted, even when someone knew it was coming and tried not to, everyone instinctively fought that sort of invasion. He could power through that resistance, of course, his power would be utterly useless if he couldn't, but it was never a pleasant experience. But it hurt a little less, it was a little better, when the person trusted and valued him. It hurt less with Ken and Chikusa, who knew him well and trusted him as much as anyone who knew him could be expected to. It had hurt a little less with Lancia as well… in those early days.

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

CACCIATORE  
NORTHERN ITALY  
1999

"You know, they aren't bad kids," Lancia commented, jerking his head toward the older boys tossing a ball back and forth between them out on the lawn.

"Are they," Mukuro replied, flatly, turning his attention away from those boys and their ridiculous game before Lancia could suggest he go join in with them. He'd marked all three boys several weeks ago and had just been thinking about whether he might be able to take control of one of them for a moment and send him careening into one of the statues hard enough to crack his stupid skull open. He'd concluded that he probably could, but there was a good chance Lancia might notice his inattention. It wasn't worth blowing his cover just to dash that little bastard's head against a rock.

"You don't like them, huh?"

"Obviously," Mukuro replied, knotting his sneakers and climbing back to his feet. "I'm going for a run."

"I'm gonna head into the kitchen and grab something to drink. You wanna go ahead and do some target practice after you get back?"

"Yeah," Mukuro answered, nodding quickly. Shooting bullets at a stationary target wasn't a great substitute for bashing someone's head in when came to stress relief, but it was probably the best he could do for a while yet. He still hadn't had a chance to mark his target or practice with him as the bastard had been out on back-to-back missions for weeks. And he rather had his heart set on using Marco Salvatore.

"Cool. I'll meet you out back in thirty."

"Okay," Mukuro replied, jogging down the steps and away from the house. He'd been at the Cacciatore headquarters for the better part of nine months and there was very little he didn't know about the property and its residents. He knew the patrol schedules, the rhythms of the operation, their closest contacts, their deadliest enemies, where the money was hidden, where most of the bodies were buried. He knew everything he needed to know about the surrounding Famiglia. There was very little to be gained from continuing to delay the inevitable bloody end of the Cacciatore.

Yet still he found excuses to put it off. He sent Ken and Chikusa to tie up some loose ends from the last few Famiglia they'd destroyed, he'd decided rather arbitrarily that he wanted to use Marco to slaughter the family even though that delayed things considerably as Marco wasn't scheduled to return for weeks yet, not until the middle of May. It was stupid really. He should just get it over with. Use Lancia or one of the little bastards playing ball out in the yard and just be done with it.

There wasn't even really a particularly compelling reason to use Marco. He certainly wasn't the strongest or the best of the many enforcers and bodyguards that worked for the Cacciatore Famiglia. No, he'd chosen him because he found him… irritating, grating. How cocky he was, how confident, the way he mocked and laughed at Lancia behind his back where Mukuro could hear. As if he might not care or as if didn't matter if he did. Marco had just smiled at him, indulgently, as if they shared a secret when he'd seen Mukuro lingering in the doorway and continued right on talking.

Lancia often played poker with Marco and some of the other bodyguards their age. And for all that he seemed to really enjoy it, Lancia was genuinely and quite remarkably awful at the game. Mukuro had never seen him win more than a hand or two in the dozen games he'd watched him play. The bodyguard had an honest face and when you matched that with a poor head for numbers and a temperament that simply wasn't well suited for a game based as much on deception and patience as it was on statistics what you got was possibly the worst player in the history of the universe. So, he was bad at it and the family teased him quite a bit for it. He got a little red in the face when they did, but he generally took it with good humor. So, it hadn't really bothered Mukuro all that much when the jokes about that continued even when Lancia wasn't around to hear them. If it had just been that, he probably wouldn't have cared at all really, but Marco and his lot also mocked the fact that Lancia was so enthusiastic about the family, so eager to be helpful and of use that he was even willing to 'play nursemaid' for the brats. What a joke, Marco jeered as if he had never benefited from Lancia's generous nature or his strong arm or his loyalty.

It had been easy enough to use his ability to control Lancia for the purpose of doling out a little punishment here and there for those little transgressions. Winning at poker, wiping the floor with assholes like Marco and Ana and George in the training room had been fun, but in the end never quite enough to satisfy. Lancia, of course, would have been horrified if he remembered any of that. Not so much about the cards, obviously, but the training room would have been difficult for him to deal with as he rarely used even a tenth of his strength when sparring with other members of his Famiglia. He might love his family, but he didn't seem to believe that they could stand against his strength. Knowing the true extent of what Lancia was capable, Mukuro knew he was right about and so he'd decided to remove Lancia from the equation entirely.

He'd expected that Lancia would notice the missing time. By the time he had marked Marco and was preparing the last things he needed before bringing an end to Cacciatore, he'd practiced with him so frequently and for such durations that he knew that Lancia had almost certainly figured out that something was very wrong with him. Lancia was smart and he was willful and he loved his family passionately and, knowing all these things about him, he'd anticipated that when Lancia realized he was missing time he would take the problem to the boss. That the boss would either send Lancia to a specialist for tests or would bring in the regional doctor who worked for several of the local Famiglia, marking that doctor would make the infiltration of the next few families infinitely easier. It wasn't something he necessarily needed to make any of his plans work, he could always incapacitate Lancia on his own, but it would have been a nice bonus and made things infinitely simpler.

But instead of going to the boss, instead of doing what he was _supposed_ to do, Lancia came to find him one warm day in late May.

Told him about the missing time, asked for his help, but mostly… had just asked him to look out for himself. Lancia wanted to keep him safe. Because of course he did. That's who Lancia was. Lancia was a protector. Lancia loved his family it just… it just hadn't occurred to him that Lancia counted him among their number. That Lancia… cared about him.

Not just about what he could do for them, but… about him.

And… it was too much.

Mukuro sat on his blanket on the lawn under that blue, blue sky and something inside him gave way and there was just so… much… rage. Rage enough to drown in, hate enough to fill the world and burn everyone and everything in it, pain enough to tear it all to pieces and then put it back together again just so he could have the pleasure of tearing it asunder once more. It was as if a swirling, howling vortex of pain and hate and rage had opened within him, as if that one act of kindness and concern had unhinged one of the rotting, wretched shutters guarding his aching, black and broken heart and set it banging against that prison fit to break. Battered as if by the rush of everything he'd kept locked down and away for so very long. Since he'd turned and seen Ken and Chikusa and realized if he didn't stop, if he couldn't find a way to stop, he'd destroy them too. He'd destroy everything because this world wasn't worth it. Nothing was worth feeling like this. So, he'd locked it away and clung to them as a lifeline, as a reason, as an excuse. As some proof that he could be… better or different or human at all. He could lock all this away, seal it down deep within him, because in order to truly take his revenge, to truly be satisfied, he needed to be patient. He needed to be patient and he needed help and they could provide the latter if not the former. And so he'd been able to box it up and put it away and he didn't need to hurt them. He needed them to survive because they were _necessary_.

But this…

He couldn't do this, take this; he couldn't be _this_.

Be a child to be _cared_ about.

Be a child to be _protected_.

He was not someone to be wanted or necessary or _loved_.

He wouldn't be tied to someone like this. He didn't need someone to protect him. He never had. No, it had just been… a novelty. He didn't need it. He didn't need someone to care about what happened to him. He didn't need any of _this_. Didn't want any of _this_. He just needed the world to _burn_. Just needed them to serve their purpose and then die _screaming_. Because it wasn't worth it, nothing was worth caring about in this world. He couldn't… he wouldn't… shouldn't… couldn't….

It was bad enough when Ken or Chikusa did things like this for him, bad enough when they worried for him, but that was mostly okay because they were part of him. Essential and vital and his in a way this man never would be. He could make sense of them worrying for him and thus for themselves, that was something he could understand. He could box up that surge of feeling they inspired and lock it away or ignore it as the oddity it was if they touched him, if they held on to him, if they cared. The urge to hurt them that came with it was pretty easily squelched. They were like him, damaged like him, part of the same whole. If they cared it was easy to think of it as self-interest and move on. Believe they were just there for themselves and he was just there because they were useful.

But to have Lancia care about him. This man, this… human puppet with his misplaced kindness and his awkward affection… care for him, genuinely worry for him…

No.

It made him feel weak.

And weak was the one thing he could never ever be.

He couldn't tolerate this feeling. It made him want to claw his skin off the way it itched and burned inside him. He couldn't breathe for wanting to lash out. Wanting to take out one of the guns in the basket and put the entire damn clip in Lancia's head until there was nothing left but blood and pulp and broken bone. The need to erase him and with him this horrid, wretched feeling he inspired was so overwhelming that he could taste that need, bitter and sour like bile, on the back of his tongue.

But no… he couldn't do that yet. Not yet. That wasn't… that wasn't what he wanted. He needed to be… patient, because just killing him wouldn't wipe away this feeling. No, he needed to be in control. He needed to be in control of himself, of this situation, of this life.

Lancia could value him, fine. He could deal with that. Value his talents or his intelligence or his diligence or any other thing about him, and that was fine. But this… this sentiment couldn't be permitted. Couldn't be allowed to exist. No, Lancia needed to be made to _understand_. To understand who and what Mukuro Rokudo was and that there was a price to be paid in blood and pain for loving a monster without regard for the danger he represented. Lancia needed to _hurt_. To be made to drown in his suffering. And he could do that, of course he could. He knew Lancia. He could make this right.

And the rage and the hate slipped back down, flowing back deep inside behind the broken shutters, like the ocean waves receding before a typhoon and leaving only the echo of pain behind. He could breathe again, focus again. He could make this _right_. He just needed to be patient. He just needed to wait just a little while longer.

So instead of killing him where he stood, Mukuro laid his hands over Lancia's and looked into his face and said, "Please, Mr. Lancia, I want to help you if I can."

Because that's what he needed to say to keep the plan together. To keep himself together, to keep from falling into pieces right there and using his power to shred everything Lancia had ever been. So, he forced a smile and agreed to watch him. He kept that brilliant smile pasted on his face while his muscles twitched and screamed in protest. Somehow managed to hold it in place looking as genuine as any smile he'd ever given until Lancia left.

Only when Lancia had disappeared back inside did Mukuro allow the mask to slip away, let the smile crack and fall into a grimace as he clenched his fists around the gun bits. This was okay. This was fine. This was… better. It was better this way. Easier. He'd thought to use Marco, had even gone to all the trouble of waiting and marking him for that purpose, but it would be easier with Lancia. He knew Lancia's limitations better and, of course, he was far stronger than any other member of the family. He could kill them all with ease. He wasn't sure why he hadn't seen that from the first. That this was the better option, the only option.

Still trembling a little with the adrenaline left behind by that cooling rage, Mukuro turned his attention back to cleaning the guns. To removing the firing pins or inserting steel rods into the chambers of each of the spar pistols. It really wouldn't do for someone to accidentally shoot him or Lancia once the action started after all. No, he couldn't afford for Lancia to die too soon. It was important he live until the last moment, because he needed to _destroy_ Lancia.

And that was why he would use him to eradicate the Famiglia he loved beyond reason and sense. The family he loved with a passion born of loyalty and friendship and valor and a desire to protect. He loved them in a way that Mukuro could love nothing and no one. And he had betrayed them, even though he hadn't meant to. Because when given the opportunity he hadn't saved any of them or even himself, instead he tried to save the boy who would one day soon be the death of him.

Lancia was utterly devoted to his family no matter the day or the hour or the circumstance. And yet, for whatever ridiculous reason, he'd tried to keep Mukuro safe above all the others, to save him from himself even if unknowingly, and that… he needed to pay for being so damn, fucking stupid. For not seeing through the illusion to the truth staring him right in the face with mismatched eyes and a fake smile.

But that would all change soon enough. Lancia would be devastated when he realized the truth, would hate him. He would hate him for all he was and all he had done and that… that would be better, that would be what he needed. Then he would be able to kill him and that would be the end of it and everything would be put to rights.

He just needed to see the moment when Lancia finally understood, first. The moment when Lancia finally understood that he couldn't actually save anyone… not even himself.

**-ooo-**

The screams of the Cacciatore Famiglia had been as a balm to his bruised and tattered soul.

He'd guided Lancia's body through the house, his great Steel Serpent making short work of doors and walls and many, many people. And those people had screamed. They had screamed and begged and they had bargained and they had pleaded for their worthless lives and he had felt better and more himself than he'd felt in months.

In the end, he'd decided against allowing Lancia to be conscious of what was happening. It had seemed a better idea to wait, to save all those memories for later. Certainly he could have, could have let the feel of slaughtering his precious Boss, his precious Famiglia wash over Lancia like water fit to drown in, helpless to stop it, a prisoner within his own mind as his body betrayed him again and again and again. And perhaps he would allow him to relive these moments later, after. But for that moment he put Lancia to sleep and he took these memories out and locked them away in some distant dusty corer of Lancia's mind, hidden and secured by layers of illusion.

He stood in the doorway of Lancia's room after the main work was done and told him to get cleaned up, to get dressed, to go out and away. To go find a poker game in town and not come back for a few hours so that Mukuro would have time to finish the last of them off, to be sure they were all dead and that he'd stripped the house of everything he needed and every last sign that he'd been there at all.

Once Lancia returned, he'd finish him off. He'd return the memories and let him see the havoc they had wrought and then he'd end him. That was the plan anyway, the latest plan, the updated plan, but then he'd gone downstairs and found the boss still alive. He hadn't expected that. The boss was surprisingly tough for being such a very, very old man. He looked far more fragile than he actually was.

And that old man was speaking, fumbling for words, his eyes glazed with pain and shock. Mukuro knelt down beside the old man's broken body, curious. "…run. Something… something is wrong with Lancia. He's... gone mad."

"That's not a very nice thing to say about a member of your family," he replied, his voice flat and cold. He still didn't like it when people spoke ill of Lancia, liked it even less that his own family didn't understand that Lancia could never do this, any of this, that Lancia would have rather died than hurt them if he'd had that option. They could have stopped him, stopped this. Could have stopped him at any time if they'd just paid attention, if they'd just seen him for the deadly cuckoo bird he had been. If they'd just seen that Lancia was in trouble, but they hadn't. He'd all but drawn them a fucking map to that conclusion with that damn poker night, but none of them had even noticed. "I'm very good at what I do, but I didn't even have to really try all that hard with Lancia. If any of you had truly known him, truly cared, it wouldn't have been so easy."

He reached out with trembling fingers to trace the old man's cheekbone and it took everything he had not to dig his fingers in and rip that frail, paper-thin skin.

"…Why?" the boss managed, realization dawning as blood bubbled at his barely parted lips.

"You know," Mukuro replied easily, struggling not to grind his teeth. "I always think that someone is going to ask how I do it, but they just never do. It's always such a disappointment. Why ask why? Does it even matter? Ask anyone and the answer is always different, but always the same too. Why does anyone do anything? Because they can."

"We were… family," he old man choked on the word and it made him want to laugh, because he couldn't ever understand their obsession with the word. Ken and Chikusa were a part of him, soft and malleable and in need of supervision and protection, but part of him nonetheless. He wouldn't hurt them, couldn't kill them, because they were as necessary as breathing and to cut one of them down would be to cut out his own brain or lungs or liver. He'd never survive it. They weren't family. Family could hurt you, kill you, burn the heart out of you and live to tell the tale. To laugh and joke and talk about how it was all for the best. Family didn't care about the individual, they cared about the whole and the whole could suffer the loss of a piece or two.

Mukuro smiled and it felt sad because he did not hate this old man, not really, but he didn't like him either. "No. We were never that. This was just a house I lived in for a short while. You were just the people in it. This was just a way station on a much longer journey."

"You… you let Lancia go, you hear?" Matteo coughed weakly, his voice fainter as it struggled valiantly against the surging tide of blood and oncoming death. "I don't know where you think you're going, but you can't take him there. He's a good boy. He doesn't deserve this."

"I imagine someone thought we were all good boys once," Mukuro replied softly. He thinks sometimes that that was how the boy he had been had ended up in that basement. With someone telling him he was loved, that he was a good boy and that he was doing the best thing he could for his family.  
Lancia had been good too, had tried to do his best for his family and Mukuro had even tried to save him in his own way. But Lancia wasn't a part of him like Ken and Chikusa were, couldn't be a part of him. Lancia could only be a tool, a way forward. That was the only way Lancia survived him. The only way anyone would ever survive him. "But no one really is. I like Lancia. He'll stay with us for a while."

Matteo laughed wetly at that though it soon became a harsh, wrenching cough. He spat blood across the floor, "You're fucking crazy, kid."

"Mm, that does seem to be the popular opinion, but I do try not to let that bother me." Mukuro replied softly, his boots squeaking against the wet tile floor as he pushed himself to his feet. "Farewell… boss."

He shut the door behind him with a quiet snap.

**-ooo-**

He'd gone back in after the boss was finally truly gone and taken his ring. It was a big, heavy clunky thing with a small orange stone and a dragon design. It was warm in his hand and he tucked it away in his pocket. After all, he knew enough to know a ring with power when he saw one and there was no telling when it might come in handy. He'd gone to the kitchen humming softly as he began the work of finishing this job once and for all. During the earlier rampage, he'd used his mark on the younger members of the Cacciatore to set them out of the way and then cast them into illusion while he'd used Lancia's power to kill the adults around them.

They all lay there still where he had left them, their expressions peaceful. Caught as they were sleeping in mental beds made up of illusions, dreaming of ball games that never ended under blue skies as he killed each of them. Just a single blow a piece, quick and sure and painless. It wasn't a kindness, or at least not an intentional one, and certainly not for their benefit. It was a… practical concern. He hadn't known if his hold on Lancia was strong enough not to break if he used him to kill children. So, it had been necessary that he do this part himself. Of course, it was also for his own benefit; a way to severe his ties to this family utterly, to free himself from their grudging kindnesses. If doing so let the weight of what he'd made him do rest the slightest bit lighter of Lancia's soul then… perhaps that was fine too. That was just how it was. It wasn't as if that were his intention, after all, it would just be an unintended consequence.

When it was done, he'd walked through the house and packed up what he would need in the months ahead: money, passports, documents and deeds, a half dozen guns, several knives and the few belongings he'd brought with him or collected over the last few months. It wasn't difficult to erase his presence from the Cacciatore house. As it happened, what he took amounted to only a half-full duffle bag.

In the end, not much of him had ever even really been here at all.

When this last task was complete, the afternoon sun was high and warm overhead and he'd gone back outside to wait for Lancia to return. He'd lain on the lawn, the silence of the compound suddenly deafening. He curled in around his knees and laughed and sobbed now that there was no left alive to see or hear it. He lay on that green, green grass where he'd spent days and months training or cleaning guns and remembered how Lancia's laughter sounded, loud and barking and real, echoing across the grounds. He wondered idly if one day he wouldn't crack completely and destroy himself and Chikusa and Ken just the same.

He'd been alone for minutes or hours when Lancia had finally returned. He was lodged firmly enough within Lancia now that he'd felt his devastation, felt the loss vibrate through him. Felt the shock, the anger, the fear and then that awful sickness and that terrible realization like a punch in the gut. It was everything he'd planned for, wanted, but… it still roused him and brought him to his feet. He wiped at his cheeks, careful to destroy any evidence that he felt anything about this at all as he went to meet Lancia in the drive in front of the house. Mukuro did not feel guilty, he'd never felt regret for any of the things he had done and probably never would, he simply wasn't made that way. But… he didn't want Lancia to disappear from this world.

So he went to him and stood before him on that uneven gravel drive and gave him a reason to stay.

Revenge had worked pretty well as a motivator for the rest of them.

Perhaps it would work for Lancia just as well.

**-ooo-**

And it had worked brilliantly… for a while.

It had worked brilliantly in terms of getting Lancia up, getting him moving and away from Cacciatore, but it hadn't been enough. He wasn't like them, not really, that much had been obvious when Lancia began thinking about killing himself. The thoughts were idle at first, mostly unconscious. Just little moments that lingered for seconds when he forced Lancia's compliance with some order. But seconds eventually became minutes and lingering glances at streets with heavy traffic, at deep water, at tall buildings and sharp objects. Eventually idle unconscious thought, became conscious contemplation and Mukuro understood that something had to be done or Lancia truly would disappear from the world.

The problem, of course, was that Mukuro didn't really understand Lancia. He probably never would, they were entirely too different in their goals in what drove and motivated them. After all, Lancia was a protector and he was a monster. Lancia was straightforward and kind and brusque and good while Mukuro often felt as if he were a book bound and wrought from the mismatched pages of a thousand different books. That all those pages called for something new, something at odds with the rest and nothing made any sense at all when you put it all together. He understood hate, rage, envy, the thirst for revenge and the extraordinary emptiness than came with all those things. He didn't understand Lancia's guilt, his despair, even while he could feel it tainting his thoughts when he spent to long in Lancia's head. Mukuro could feel the pain these emotions caused Lancia, but he couldn't ever seem to grasp what to do about them. He had no talent for fixing things, only for breaking them.

In the end, when he felt that razor sharp blade touch Lancia's throat he'd panicked. He'd panicked and he'd tried to give him something to stay for and he was certain he'd failed. All he'd had to offer was more illusions. Just excuses and lies with a few precious threads of truth woven in and he'd offered those to him. Offered them up in answer to his questions and retreated, run away and left Lancia to make his choice. Because at the end of the day he couldn't watch him every moment, couldn't rule his every action without exhausting himself, so he needed Lancia to choose to stay on his own.

He had actually been kind of surprised when Lancia had emerged from that bathroom with a Band-Aid on his neck, but otherwise none the worse for wear, and yelled at Ken and Chikusa to take off their damn shoes if they were going to flop all over the bed like that.

He had been surprised, but also strangely grateful.

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

THE GANG  
NORTHERN ITALY  
2001

**MUKURO**

Six months. He'd been in solitary for six months and while at first it had been just what he needed, by the sixth month it was beginning to grate. The relative solitude had allowed him time to focus, to set plans for their escape and for after. To learn to use possession more effectively at a distance to control marks and mark new people in order to expand his network and give them greater reach, access to more information and build their wealth and influence. But it also gave him too much time to think while whenever he had to rest which was often after he used his possession skills to control men and women countries or oceans away. It didn't help that some piece of him, almost certainly caused by one of those long lost lives had made up the core of who he was, had apparently decided to helpfully add claustrophobia to the long and already overwhelming list of fears jangling about inside him.

So for the last month or so part of him had been a constant gibbering, slobbering, sobbing mess which had wreaked merry hell with his ability to focus on organizing a successful escape plan. He felt sick constantly. It was a relentless struggle to deny that part of him, to maintain enough control to be able to sit quietly and smile pleasantly when he was being observed which fortunately wasn't often. The guards typically checked in on him at each meal and twice overnight and while time keeping was challenging it seemed as regular as clockwork. What it was exactly they expected him to be doing that was of interest in his windowless closet of a cell, he had no damn idea.

In the end he'd kept the plan as simple and straightforward as he could, it was the best he could manage with his head pounding and feeling sick all the time. Plus, there was Ken to consider. He was definitely getting worse, more restless and more violent in even his most casual exchanges with the guards. He didn't have the luxury of time, not if he wanted to keep all these pieces of himself in their best condition.

So, he'd made a deal and hired help, because escape wouldn't be easy with just the four of them. On a normal day, he wouldn't trust Jane or Levi to pick up his shoes, but they both had plenty of enemies in Traditore and were insatiably greedy to boot. It hadn't been difficult to convince them to go allow with his plans and he'd gladly compensated them for their pains. Money wasn't something that concerned him overly much as they'd managed to amass plenty of it from all the families they'd killed over the last few years.

So, Levi and Jane had gotten into a brawl in the lunchroom and both had enough serious injuries from the fight that the guards were forced to take them to the infirmary. As soon as they'd been patched up, about an hour and a half before the change of the guard, Mukuro used the opportunity to break the Traditore's security, taking possession of all the guards simultaneously. He left them sitting or standing at their stations, allowed them to continue on their patrol routes, but made them blind, deaf and dumb to what was happening on the monitors, in the corridors in front of them, as the two prisoners he had paid to injure themselves escaped from the infirmary. Jane lifted the keys from the head guard while Marco operated the gates between them and the holding area. Together the two hurried down the hall to the cell where Ken, Chikusa and Lancia were being held.

Twenty minutes later, they'd been released from their cell with the help of their temporary allies and had made their way to the property room to collect their things. They'd all had their favored weapons with them when they'd been captured and it wasn't a great idea to leave any of those behind, particularly not Lancia's Steel Serpent ball or his actual trident. Both were too useful to abandon and so they wasted another twenty minutes while the boys tossed boxes searching for their stuff.

They had finally left the property room behind and were heading down the next hall towards solitary when Mukuro's head began to ache with the strain of the simultaneous possessions and the illusions he was throwing up to hide them from the other prison personnel and prisoners. He curled up, bringing his knees in tight against his chest and wrapping his arms around them tightly. The ache became a burn when he forced the guard on level B to flip the switch that would open the gate and allow them through.

Two more levels, one more level, two guards having conversations (one with a flirty nurse the other with a janitor who'd come in early) and it was becoming difficult to focus so he made a comment to the nurse about the shortness of her skirt that got the guard a slap in the face and caused the nurse to storm off. The janitor was a larger issue, but he was able eventually to convince him to go grab the guard a pack of gum from his locker. The group had arrived at solitary at last and it was with no small amount of relief that he had the guard outside his block pull the switch to allow them access to the bank of solitary cells. He layered illusion on top of illusion, pressing them into place on the minds of each of the other guards still watching the monitors or working near their final escape route. These illusions wouldn't hold for long nor would they hold up if something unforeseen happened, but they would have to do. He could feel blood dripping down, taste it on his lips and he licked it away irritably. The pounding in his head was deafening. This would have to be good enough.

He'd have to believe that they could handle it from here. He would have to trust in Lancia to remain loyal to them, to help them and that was the worst part. It was easier to trust the mafia scum whose loyalty he'd purchased, they didn't hate him at least. But in the end it didn't matter if trust came easy or hard because his vision was already fading out, awash with black squiggly lines and pain.

**-ooo-**

**KEN**

Ken dashed down the hall with Chikusa at his heels, "Mukuro!"

"Here," came a hoarse rasp, barely more than a whisper. If he hadn't had the wolf channel on he probably wouldn't have heard it at all. It took him no time to get to the door and shatter the exterior lock with his claws. He yanked the door open with a squeal of protesting metal, allowing Chikusa to slip past him into the cell.

Mukuro blinked up at them from his cot, looking thinner and more worn than he'd ever seen him, a trail of blood ran from his nose and his ear down across his face. "Good job," he whispered as his eyes fluttered closed once more and he slumped limp against the cot.

Chikusa touched fingers against his forehead, "He feels warm."

Lancia nodded, shouldering his way past Ken into the cell, "Probably just overdid it. Let's get the fuck out of here. We'll worry about it once we're clear."

Ken nodded quickly, glaring down the hall at the two men guarding their escape route, "can we still trust them?"

Lancia snorted, grabbing Mukuro's limp body with his free arm and hefting him over his shoulder, "Yeah, the brat doesn't leave things half finished. They'll do what we need them to do."

"Right, yeah, of course," Ken replied, nodding again and again. He felt anxious, itchy, twitchy. Everything inside him was screaming for him to go, to run, to kill anything and anyone that stood in his way. It had been easy to focus while they were on their way here, it was getting harder now without the need to get to Mukuro driving him.

He could feel a soft growl bubbling in his chest, a low warning rumble of sound, as he prowled back down the hall following Lancia's lead. His claws clicked together impatient as they moved through hall after empty hall and with every step it seemed like his vision narrowed further, until all he could see was the path just before him. Tiles and doors and locks and finally, finally, finally a man who smelled of cheap gun oil and leather and fear.

He licked his lips and grinned, saliva filling his mouth in anticipation of the strike because he could gut him, kill him, eat him….

**-ooo-**

**CHIKUSA**

Chikusa narrowed his eyes and leapt forward, snatching a handful of Ken's shaggy blond hair and yanking him back as he hard as he could, putting his whole body into the motion and wincing when Ken snarled and turned on him, lashing out and swiping blindly with one set of claws. He felt the claws slide just beneath his sleeve as he dodged, heard fabric rip, but he didn't have time to think about that now. Instead he snagged the hand with his free hand, jabbing his fingertips into the joints of one claw than the next, dislocating the fingers and twisting his hold to apply pressure enough to cause Ken to hiss and snarl again as he drove him to his knees. He stepped in close, as close as he could manage while maintaining his hold on Ken's hair and hand, leaning down and pressing his mouth as close to Ken's ear as he could. "Stop."

And he did. Stood stock-still, muscles trembling with the strain of it. He was panting and trembling, balanced precariously on a razor's edge between reason and instinct. Or least that's how it felt. It felt dangerous, so dangerous, but… he could do this. Ken was his and he wouldn't give him up for anything. Certainly not to this, not to what they'd done to him, to this small part of who he was. "Ken," he whispered and he felt his friend shiver against him and he knew they were okay even before Ken whispered his name in return, gruff and tentative with just the barest note of confusion.

"Chikusa?"

"Ken," he repeated, exhaling slowly and letting his grip on Ken loosen minutely, "Troublesome. We're almost out. Need you here."

The claws of the hand he held flexed before carefully, cautiously threading between his fingers. It wasn't comfortable exactly, but it was Ken coming back from wherever he'd gone and it felt like relief. "Don't freak out. Save it for later."

Ken nodded, once, sharply, "Yeah, sorry. Later. Right. I can freak out later."

Chikusa ran his fingers through his hair once, twice. "Yes. You're a wolf, so try not to be such a pussy."

"Shut the fuck up, Kappa." Ken managed, choking and coughing around a surprised bark of laugh.

"Whenever you girls are done making out, we're kind of on a time table here," the big blond prisoner called from where he was waiting for them just inside the door, the unconscious guard beside him. Lancia had already gone ahead with Mukuro and the one Ken kept calling 'The Weasel'.

They'd been lucky there hadn't been more resistance than that one last guard. Mukuro had been very thorough in taking care of all the potential challenges they might face. Still holding Ken's clawed hand, Chikusa pulled Ken to his feet, down the hall and out the door into the night beyond. The night was cool and smelled like rain and everything was damp even though the night was clear and cool and full of stars. After six months in that stinking cell anything would have smelled amazing he realized, but this was still an unexpected and welcome gift.

Breathing deeply, Chikusa yanked on Ken's hand and jogged off in the direction of the employee lot. He could hear the sound of the blond fella following his lead, of the steel door slamming shut behind them, but he didn't care about that. He could see the tall dark figure of Lancia loping ahead of them across the grass, the steel ball swinging at his side and Mukuro bouncing gently over his shoulder. Ken was running with him, beside him, still clinging to his hand like a lifeline and for this moment life was good.

When they got to the lot, clamoring over the low fence that surrounded it, Chikusa chose a dented pick-up truck and broke the window, unlocking the door and slipping inside to rip off the panel and wire the truck up. It roared to life a few minutes later and Ken let out a terrific whoop, punching the air like the incredible dork he actually was.

Still… it maybe made him a little happy to see it.

**-ooo-**

**KEN**

Lancia ended up driving because he was the only one they trusted that knew how; neither he nor Chikusa had ever bothered to learn and Mukuro was still sleeping. The big blond man, who he thought was named Levi, insisted that he was an excellent driver, but Ken would rather eat broken glass than trust the hired help to not get them all killed careening over dark country roads in the middle of the night in a stolen pick-up. So, instead, he ordered those assholes into the cab with Lancia and he and Chikusa had hauled Mukuro into the bed of the truck with them. Laid him up against the back of the cab and settled on either side of him so they could keep him steady between them.

As soon as they were settled, he pried the cartridge out of his mouth and handed it to Chikusa. "Keep that fucking thing away from me for a little while, huh?"

He felt fucking sick just touching it. Kept feeling and hearing the rip of Chikusa's shirt under his claws. If he'd been just a little further gone, if Chikusa had been just a little slower… fuck. He couldn't think about that now. If he thought about that now he was going to start freaking out and he might never stop. Fuck.

Chikusa took the cartridge with a nod and slid it into his pocket. "I'll keep it safe," he commented seriously, like it was a promise.

And then Lancia put the truck in gear and they were away, rumbling down the long, dark and winding road as the Traditore faded to a distant memory behind them. And for a moment he forgot to feel guilty about what he'd almost done; he forgot to be worried about Mukuro or irritated about the hired help. As the truck flew up the road, bumping painfully over what felt like every fucking rock in the fucking world, he smiled widely and closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of fresh air on his face and the knowledge that his family was beside him and whole once more. Sure, he'd had a bad spell earlier and Mukuro was still out of it and his ass was soaking wet because the damn truck bed had been lousy with fucking rainwater, but… whatever. They were free and they were together and everything was good.

"Stop grinning like an idiot," Mukuro coughed beside him. Ken opened his eyes, just grinning wider as he watched Mukuro push himself up on unsteady arms to lean more firmly against the back of the truck cab. "Your face could freeze like that."

"Who cares?!" Ken shouted, laughter bubbling up inside, his voice almost lost over the sound of the truck engine and the howl of the wind. "We fucking missed you so much."

Chikusa's face was as bland and expressionless as usual, but his voice was warm and louder than usual as he added. "He was hopeless without you."

Mukuro smiled, dropping his head against Chikusa's shoulder and patting Ken's leg. It was probably the closest he'd get to admitting he was glad to see them too. Mukuro was a stubborn guy that way. "It is a nice night, isn't it? Wake me when we near Lucca so I can send Jane and Levi on their way. I've booked passage for the four of us on a cargo ship out of Marina di Carrara. I'll need to be awake to cast the illusions that'll keep us from being seen and noted by anyone at the port."

Chikusa and Ken exchanged a worried look over Mukuro's head. "You gonna be up for that?"

"It's fine. I'll be fine after I rest."

"If you say so. So, um, we're bringing Lancia with us?" He asked a little uncertainly, he liked having Lancia around. As much as he didn't like it was Lancia treated him like a kid and as much as he didn't really trust him, couldn't trust him because he wasn't one of them, he was all right. But... he was also the most likely to be recognized. He kind of wondered if maybe that wasn't what had gotten them picked up in Ravenna in the first place.

Mukuro nodded sleepily, "Still need him. He's Mukuro Rokudo after all."

Ken shrugged, letting it go. Mukuro was the one with the plan; if he said they needed Lancia then they probably would. "Where are we going anyway?"

"For now? New York."

"That's… in the United States, right? Why the fuck are we going there?"

"We need to disappear for a while. The United States is as good a place to do that as any. The mafia presence is significantly less there and so the Vindice don't have as many eyes on the ground. I'll teach you all English, we'll get lost for awhile and I'll keep working through possession while I figure out what our next move should be."

Ken frowned, scrunching his face up at the thought of learning English. They'd never really been to school, not since before the labs and that always seemed like another life. They hadn't ever really stayed anywhere long enough to think about stuff like school and learning things. Chikusa had taught him to read a couple years ago and Mukuro had taught them both some math and history and stuff. Lancia sometimes taught him things like how to tie a proper knot, how to identify things in the forest into edible and poisonous and gross, but… learning a whole other language?

He'd been kind of shitty at learning to read in Italian. It had taken Chikusa a really long time to teach him and more than a few times Chikusa had pitched books at his head and deemed him the worst student in the world. He'd always come back and worked with him again hours (and sometimes days) later, but… Ken didn't think he was gonna be all that much better at it in English. Plus, Mukuro probably wouldn't be nice enough to just throw books at him. Mukuro had a hell of a temper sometimes and a tendency to throw sharp objects when annoyed. He wasn't a patient person, not really, not when it came to people he wasn't trying to con or murder. This just seemed like a terrible idea waiting to happen.

But… he really didn't want to hold them back. So, even if he had to work twice as hard, he'd just have to figure it out. Besides if Mukuro thought he could teach him, maybe he could. Mukuro had done things that seemed way tougher than that. Probably. Maybe. "Okay," he said finally and Chikusa gave Mukuro a nod, a small bashful smile curling his lips.

"Good, okay," Mukuro replied, giving them a small answering smile of his own before drifting back off again, his head still leaning against Chikusa's shoulder.

Mukuro's fever was gone by the time they arrived in Marina di Carrara early the next afternoon. He'd been awake off and on since Lucca where they'd stopped just long enough to send the hired help packing and grab some food and new clothes before hitting the road again.

He'd been nervous about the ship at first, worried it would be too much like the prison with all those tiny little cabins and being unable to leave, but it was okay. The cabins were tiny, but they didn't have to spend much time in there. So Ken spent most of the first week on the boat alternating between quietly freaking out and avoiding Chikusa and exploring the ship from top to bottom.

Mukuro cornered him three days after they left the port, his mismatched eyes visible for once and narrowed in irritation. "You are going to knock it the fuck off or I am going to kill you."

"What? What'd I do?!" Ken yelped, dropping down from where he'd been hanging off one of the upper deck railings. His English was definitely getting better, but he'd still only caught enough of that to figure that Mukuro was pissed off about something.

"I apologize, I should have been more clear," Mukuro leaned in close and Ken felt the point of Mukuro's sword prick the tender underside of his chin painfully. He switched to Italian, his tone clipped and harsh. "Fix it. Whatever happened- and no I don't care what it was- I just want you to fix it. I'm tired of watching him mope and you run yourself ragged trying to avoid someone isn't chasing you. It's distracting and annoying. You're annoying. Knock it off. Or I'll have Lancia throw you both overboard and you can swim to New York."

"You know that's like totally impossible, right? We couldn't swim from here at all. It's not like I have a dolphin channel."

"Well, imagine that," Mukuro replied dryly, switching back to English and allowing the sword to fall away. "If I were you, I'd keep that in mind if you're considering ignoring my suggestion."

"Suggestion? That was supposed to be a suggestion? Are you sure that word means what you think it means?" Ken called back in halting English as Mukuro flicked him off and continued back downstairs towards the kitchens.

**-ooo-**

**LANCIA**

"Fuck you! It isn't like I wanted to attack you!"

"Lame apology."

"Who's apologizing? If you'd just let me kill the guard it wouldn't have been a problem, huh?!"

"It would have been a problem. Mukuro said not to kill anyone."

"Oh, like one fucking guard would have made such a difference."

Chikusa flicked him off, flopping back on his bunk and turning away with a grumbled, "Orders are orders."

"_Orders_ are _orders_," Ken mocked, sticking his tongue out and throwing a pair of balled up socks at Chikusa. "Leccaculo."

Chikusa whipped back around at that, caught the socks and threw them back twice as hard. The ball struck Ken in the forehead and that started another round of cursing and a bunch more thrown clothes that sped back and forth across the room hitting Ken far more often than they hit Chikusa.

Lancia rolled his eyes and tried to block them out as he slid the cloth across the grooves in the Steel Serpent, carefully brushing away the six months worth of dust and debris that had settled in the cuts and would throw off the balance if left unattended. It was amazing how much more irritating it was to listen to them bicker in this weird mix of English and Italian. He couldn't remember being this much hard fucking work when he was that age. Hell, maybe he had been and had just blocked that shit out because it was embarrassing to think of himself like that. Either way, if they didn't sort their shit out soon, he was going to lose his fucking mind because this was ridiculous.

Fortunately or unfortunately, he wasn't the person in the room with the shortest temper.

"BASTA!" Mukuro exploded and both boys whirled around, pale as his milk and looking guilty as hell. Mukuro glared at them, rattling his trident (which Lancia was certain he hadn't had a moment ago) irritably in their direction. "How hard is it to just settle this and move on? You're both driving me crazy."

"Too late for that," Lancia muttered, gaze flickering between Mukuro and the grooves on the Steel Serpent.

A sharp pain shot through his head, making his eye twitch and his fingers clench against the Steel Serpent. There and then gone, but Mukuro's brief glare was enough to tell him who was responsible.

As if there had ever been any fucking _doubt_.

"Look, you," Mukuro jabbed a finger at Ken's frowning face, "feel terrible because you lost control and could have hurt him, but you didn't, so stop being such a big damn baby about it. And you," he turned back to face Chikusa, "hate that he feels guilty. You blame yourself because you didn't notice he was losing it sooner. Knock it the fuck off, both of you. It all worked out, who cares?"

"I'm not…!" Ken began, looking a little panicked.

Simultaneously, Chikusa grimaced and shook his head hard. "It isn't…."

Lancia rubbed his fingers over his temples as the argument started again, this time over why who was really to blame for the problem in the first place and why Mukuro was so completely and obviously wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

Mukuro liked to pretend he was above these petty arguments. And most of the time he actually seemed like maybe he was. He was so clearly the person in charge in most situations that it made him seem older more mature than he actually was. That all broke down the second he tried to settle Ken and Chikusa's arguments. When Mukuro tried to settle a fight, he always and without fail, proved him himself to be absolutely, positively just another brat for all his power and lack of conscience. When he got into the middle of these things it was like pouring gasoline on a fire and then tossing in a box of dynamite. Mukuro had no tact, no filter between what went through his brain and what came out his mouth and exactly zero compunction about broadcasting whatever Ken or Chikusa might be thinking at any given moment to anyone within earshot with zero understanding of why they might not enjoy that.

For someone who he could grudgingly admit was brilliant when it came to manipulating strangers, Mukuro was just plain awful when it came to dealing with his friends.

Lancia knew from years of experience around the trio that this argument, which probably would have petered out in another day would now probably continue, off and on, for weeks.

Fucking _teenagers_.

**-ooo-**

The two weeks they spent on that cargo ship felt like months, but eventually they arrived in New York City with a good grasp on the English language and a deep desire to be off the damn boat already.

The city was bigger, busier and more crowded than any place Lancia had ever been. The buildings were taller and everything seemed hurried as if everyone had somewhere very important to be that they should have been at an hour ago. Mukuro had somehow- and he didn't ask how because he really didn't want to know- wrangled them an apartment in what seemed like a pretty good area in a relatively well-maintained brownstone. The elevator was tiny and shitty and rattled and heaved like an eighty-year-old smoker climbing stairs, but the apartment itself was a big open-plan thing with three decent beds in areas cordoned off by old, ratty curtains, a tiny kitchen and a fire escape for a balcony. It was… weirdly perfect.

Ken, always twice as excited as anyone else in their little gang about a new place, went whooping across the apartment to claim his room first, snagging Chikusa's stuff and tossing it in the same area as if it were a foregone conclusion that they would be sharing and… he supposed it was. He'd never known Chikusa and Ken to sleep apart even when they had the space and safety to do so. Lancia had always assumed it was just the result of long habit, but… some days he really wondered if he didn't need to pull them aside individually and give them the talk, or a talk at least.

Just in case.

It would be embarrassing as fuck, no doubt, but even he could feel an air of inevitably around those two that said yeah and probably and someday. Assuming that they didn't all get themselves killed first, of course.

_Maybe next year._

Lancia lifted an eyebrow in Mukuro's direction and got a less than eloquent shrug in response. "First, stay out of my head, kid. Second, you mean you're gonna get us killed next year? Or I'm gonna need to give them the talk next year?"

"I don't know. Either? Both?" Mukuro replied, shrugging again. He had that vaguely vacant look on his face that always meant half of his attention was somewhere else. "It's awkward. _They're_ awkward. The whole thing is embarrassing."

"Because boys have cooties?" Lancia replied, chuckling as he came out to flop down on the fire escape steps near Mukuro. They'd been in New York for two weeks and the weather was starting to warm up a little. It was early evening and a cool breeze blew across the city making the fire escape the best place to be.

"Shut it. I just meant that they think about each other, but it's not... not like that yet. And, besides, I could give them the talk."

Lancia snorted, rolling his eyes, "Yeah, that is absolutely a thing you should do. You'd traumatize them for years. They would literally never have sex with anyone… ever. Problem solved."

"Shut it," Mukuro grumbled and he could have sworn Mukuro was blushing a little, glaring off into the middle distance.

But since he liked his head just fine where it was, he thought it was probably better to ignore that and never mention this again.

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

THE GANG  
NEW YORK CITY  
2001

**LANCIA**

The first few months they spent in New York were strangely quiet, almost peaceful. Mukuro spent most of his time collapsed in the armchair or sitting out on the balcony, his eyes closed and his mind elsewhere. Chikusa and Ken had both started picking up odd jobs for a few local gangs, assassinations, enforcement, and the occasional pick-up. They usually worked together as a pair, more often than not, but occasionally Chikusa would pick up the odd long-range assassination. Just to keep his hand in, he said. Lancia got work at a high-end pawn shop down the street, where his job seemed to be mainly to look intimidating enough that customers accepted what ever lowball number he lobbed at them for the goods they brought in to sell or pawn. The fact that he knew a hell of a lot about firearms and weapons in general didn't hurt, but that wasn't the main reason the old man, a craggy snickering fella named Marty, had hired him.

And for a while, things were… good. They picked up bits and pieces from shops around the city and off the street to add to the place until slowly their apartment began to become less a place they were staying and more of a home. He cooked dinner most nights and most nights all three boys were there to eat it even if they didn't really have a table or nothing to eat it at. They just sat around the makeshift living room, watching sitcoms or old movies on the shitty television he'd brought home from the Marty's shop one evening in late April. And it was kind of nice as long as he didn't let himself think too much about the past.

It really shouldn't have surprised him that those quiet days couldn't last forever.

The first hint he had that something was wrong was when he came home one warm evening in May. When he walked into the apartment, the first he noticed was how dark it was. Their apartment was almost never dark as Mukuro was almost always home and kept strange hours at the best of times.

"Mukuro?" He called, shutting the door behind him and letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. The apartment was sweltering warm, all the windows and the balcony door shut up tight, something they almost never were. He stepped further into the room, the beginnings of panic pooling in his belly. "Mukuro?"

A sudden shushing sound, the kind of noise you might hear as a kid being too loud at the library, rang out through the apartment making him jump. He whipped around to face the direction the sound had come from with a sharp curse. He stepped around the couch and he found Mukuro sitting on the floor in the corner, his face buried against his knees. "Jesus, what the fuck is going on, kid?"

"Nothing," Mukuro replied, but his voice was shaky and uncertain showing that answer for the lie it was. "It's nothing."

"I can't help if you don't talk to me, kid."

"I don't need your help, Mr. Lancia."

"Right, yeah, clearly," Lancia replied, rolling his eyes as he left Mukuro to his overdramatic mope and went to open the windows. "This place is an oven, kid. I'm opening these windows unless you have a good reason not to."

His only answer was silence so Lancia figured that was as good as he was going to get and lifted the windows and opened the balcony doors. "You cool with me turning on the lights too?"

"Why did we come here, Mr. Lancia?" Mukuro asked suddenly.

Lancia paused on his way to the light switch, glancing back over at Mukuro's corner. "To New York?"

"Yes."

"Shit, why are you asking me, kid? That was your call. Ours is not to wonder why and all that shit."

"I can't remember."

Or at least that's what it sounded like; the words were spoken so softly that Lancia thought he must have misheard. "What was that?"

"Nothing," Mukuro replied, his voice firm as he uncoiled and pushed himself to his feet. "It's nothing. I'm sure I'm just imagining things. Forget it. What's for dinner?"

**-ooo-**

**MUKURO**

There was something about the city that he hated.

A pervasive, creeping, crawling dread that tugged at his senses, squirmed under his skin; that felt much like what he imagined insanity must feel like. An inherent distrust of the world around him, of the pavement under his feet and the stinking rot of garbage in the alley behind the building they lived in.

It hadn't been like that at first. The first few months had been… good. He'd plotted and they'd worked and everything had they'd settled into a routine. It had been… nice. Really nice and for once he didn't feel the constant pressure of wanting, needing to move on to the next target, to get it done. Here he'd felt content to monitor his plans from miles and oceans away and simply be even if for just a little while and if he'd felt the slightest bit off, the slightest bit uneasy, it had been easy to dismiss as a side effect of the weird domesticity of their new life.

It couldn't last, of course, nothing did, but they'd been in the city for almost four months when the first inklings that something was wrong began to stir at the back of his mind and he stopped being able to so easily shrug it off. When he was on the street or sitting on the balcony, he began to sometimes get the feeling that someone or something was watching him. He began to get a little anxious every time one of the others left the house, fear welling up whenever they returned even a moment later than he thought they should. And with each passing day all these feelings just got worse, stronger, and his stomach tensed with dread and fear occasionally stole his breath as if his body inherently understood something that his mind couldn't yet comprehend.

Nine months has passed since they had arrived and it felt like someone was watching him all the time now. When he was trying to sleep, when he was working, when he was eating, showering, taking a piss. It was somehow far worse than being monitored while they'd been imprisoned. Here it felt like he was constantly on display, constantly vulnerable and that feeling, that feeling was driving him slowly mad. The only time he could escape it, the only time he felt at ease was in those brief moments when his awareness was locked on one of his pawns. When he was moving them about, ferreting out information, trading currency for secrets and secrets for cash. In those moments he felt free and unfettered, powerful in a way he hadn't felt since they'd boarded the boat for America. In America, when he was alone in his own head, he felt small, fragile, weak and it was making him paranoid; it was making it difficult to focus, difficult to see what the right path was.

"You're really fucking twitchy these days. What the hell's going on?" Ken asked softly one night as they lingered on their makeshift balcony together. Chikusa was working, an assassination across town on a man tied to the Nueveo Famiglia. Mukuro had sent Lancia with him. They'd all looked at him like he was weird for doing so, since he'd never cared before if Chikusa went out on an assassination alone, but they'd humored him and Lancia had gone along. It wasn't anything specific, he didn't have a bad feeling about it or anything it was just… it made him feel better. He didn't like any of them going anywhere alone these days.

"I don't know," Mukuro replied, his foot tapping restlessly against the metal of the fire escape. "I don't know. I…" He hesitated, but this was Ken and Ken was a part of him. He could tell Ken, it was okay to tell Ken. "I haven't… I haven't felt right since we got here and it's just getting worse. I feel like someone's watching me all the time. Like we're being set up, but… I was the one who decided to come here. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me."

"Why _did_ you want to come here anyway?"

"That's part of the problem. I… It seemed like the right decision at the time. Like something I needed to do and then we got here and I feel… lost sometimes. Like my purpose in being here has slipped away. We hang about doing odd jobs and picking up assassination work and I lay plans in other places, but… it's nothing we couldn't do somewhere else, anywhere else."

"Then maybe we should just pack up and fucking leave."

"Maybe," Mukuro admitted, leaning further over the rail to stare down at the street far below. "Maybe we should."

They both startled at the resounding twins bangs of the door being kicked in so hard it bounced off the wall. Mukuro pulled his gun even as Ken was shoving a cartridge in his mouth and they each hit the wall on either side of the window. They'd all taken to carrying weapons with them at all times since they'd escaped from Traditore, even if they didn't often have a use for them.

A quick glance into the room revealed Lancia, striding through the doorway and kicking the broken door shut behind him. He had Chikusa thrown over his shoulder like a sack of flour… if a sack of flour could be belligerent, complain and bleed all over everything.

"What the damn _hell_?! " Ken snarled, scrambling through the window and across the room in seconds. He was already there and helping Chikusa off Lancia's shoulder and over to the couch before Mukuro had even managed to get back through the window.

"S-sorry," Chikusa murmured as Mukuro caught his eye.

"What happened?"

"There was a kid there, waiting, had a knife. Put a dozen needles in his eye, he kept coming. Pulled a gun, shot me. Glancing blow. Lancia threw him off the roof, grabbed me and ran home."

"You kill the little fuck?" Ken growled, examining the wound to Chikusa's side intently. He grunted and went to grab the kit. Mukuro leaned closer, from what he could see of it, Chikusa was right. The wound had been a glancing blow and it looked, fortunately, mostly superficial. It was bleeding quite a bit, but would probably heal decently well once it was stitched up, just another scar for the collection.

"Nah, don't think so. We aren't that lucky. Tough little bastard like that could probably manage to survive the fall; the building just wasn't that damn tall. He said that I wasn't Esterneo so he didn't have any business with me right before I tossed him."

Mukuro felt tension stiffen his spine. It had been months since he'd thought about Esterneo, about using a hammer to smash the tiles in the entryway bearing that name, that insignia, to pieces before they left. About how it had felt to kill them, to strangle them and shoot them and shove their brains so full of nightmares they killed themselves. How good it had felt, how right, what a relief it had been when Ken killed the last of them. How calm he'd felt when it was just the three of them and all the rest were gone. Just bad memories of a terrible place best forgotten.

When they were alone at last, just the three of them and it had been good, better than good. They'd been his. His to protect and his to control and his to use and that was okay. That was okay, because they said it was okay and he could handle that. He couldn't love them like they loved each other, but he could use them and guide them and look after them and keep them safe. Because they were as much a part of him as all the other shattered bits that he'd been made from.

Only he hadn't kept them safe.

"The fuck did you say?!" Ken snarled, snapping the needle he was in the middle of threading.

"Esterneo. The kid said he only had business with Esterneo. He's talking about you guys, right?"

"Fuck," Ken spat tossing the snapped needle bits away and grabbing another, threading it with shaking fingers.

"I… yes we… I didn't hear it," Chikusa murmured, shaking his head as if to clear it. "Sorry."

"No. I'm sorry. This is my fault," Mukuro breathed, unsure whether he said it aloud or not. Not sure if it really mattered.

He kept failing them in pursuit of their goals, because you could be successful or you could be safe and they chose success. It was half the reason he'd kept Lancia with them all this time. Lancia was the best he could do for them. He could trust Lancia, wanted to trust Lancia, because he knew Lancia wouldn't betray those two at least, would never hurt them or allow harm to come to them. Lancia was a protector, their protector. So, it was okay. It wasn't perfect, but it was okay if they went to prison for a little while here and there because Lancia would make sure they were well and safe even there. But could Lancia keep them safe from him? Because clearly he was the one who couldn't be trusted here. He had betrayed them all however unknowingly. It seemed obvious now and he felt stupid, stupid for not realizing it, for not seeing it before.

When he'd set them on a path to destroy the mafia, he should have started with the remnants of Esterneo. Should have realized that not all of them would be in that house, in those labs. Should have made more of an effort to ferret them out and destroy every last fragment of that Famiglia so he'd never have to hear that damned name again. It was painfully and embarrassingly obvious now that one of them had been able to slip ideas into his mind. Had been able to weasel their way inside and push through his defenses and tried to use him as the instrument of their destruction. If it hadn't been for Lancia, if it hadn't been for that creeping sensation, Chikusa would probably be dead and he and Ken none the wiser. Esterneo wouldn't have taken a shot at them if they didn't think they could take them.

He used to think about it every day. Every single day without fail he would think about it; think about the way it had felt to spin through hell after hell and life after life and to wake up from that. He used to think of their faces; of the face of that man peering down at him with his scars and his smile, of all the people he'd killed, the great and savage joy of destruction. Every single day he would pull those memories out and turn them over in his mind because they kept the pain fresh, the rage fresh. Fresh, but not overwhelming because they were just memories and they couldn't hurt them anymore. And now he'd spent months, months, not giving any of it a thought and suddenly there was a boy. A boy with that name on his lips and no doubt a taste for murder and vengeance in his heart, because Esterneo made all its children just the same.

"We need to leave. We should never have come here."

"Mukuro?" Ken asked and he sounded just the tiniest bit scared and Mukuro couldn't blame him for that. He was scared enough for all four of them. Scared about what this meant. About what had survived the destruction they'd brought to Esterneo and why he seemed to have a blind spot for it.

"Get packed. We're going. We're going as soon as Chikusa is patched up."

Chikusa had almost died and it was his fault.

He couldn't fight like this. Not like this. Not yet. Not now.

"Mukuro? What…."

"Don't question him, kid. Go pack your shit. I'll patch Chikusa up so you pack his shit too and Mukuro's and mine while you're at it. If we can't carry it with us, it stays here." Lancia interjected gruffly, giving Ken a shove in the direction of the bedroom the boys shared. Not for the first time, he was thankful for Lancia's ability to adapt quickly to changing situations.

"But…."

"Ken. Now," Mukuro hissed, not bothering to hide the bubbling beginnings of rage from his voice. He needed to be angry now just as he needed the fear that was pumping through him, lighting him up. His muscles were trembling, vibrating with it and his shirt was damp with sweat. This was his fault. His fault and he needed to fix it.

He stripped off that damp shirt and wadded it up in his hands as he flopped down in the battered armchair they'd hauled up off the street a few weeks ago.

He tried not to think of Ken and Chikusa laughing as they'd heaved it up seven flights of stairs, breathless and almost dropping the damn heavy thing again and again because it was too much for them to manage and there was too big a risk they'd be seen for Ken to use his channels. They'd managed to get it up all of seven flights by the time Lancia got home from work and he'd laughed and laughed at them as he picked it up with one strong arm and hauled it up the next five flights by himself. They'd laughed too, swaying and holding on to each other for support as they stumbled up the stairs after him.

It was the closest he'd ever been to honestly, genuinely happy. He'd been almost happy here and now everything that had happened since they'd arrived here, even that moment- maybe especially that moment- was tainted by the shade of Esterneo's manipulations. That single virtually happy moment had almost come at the cost of Chikusa's life and that was not a price he was willing to pay. They'd hurt Chikusa, intended to kill him, and there was a price to be paid for both failure and success on that front. A price he would gladly take out of them in trade.

So he sat down in that armchair that represented everything he needed to never feel again and stuffed the damp, wadded up shirt in his mouth. It tasted of salt and stank of fear and it suited his mood perfectly. It would also muffle the screams and hopefully keep him from biting his own damn tongue off. He refused to look at Lancia as he heard him asking what the hell he was doing, instead just sending a quick firm order that he finish patching up Chikusa and not interfere. Then he closed his eyes, flipped through his powers until he found the one he needed and used his illusions to pull his own mind apart, to peer into all the dark and secret places where a rat could hide.

Because there would be a rat, a mole, a bug in his mind chirp, chirp, chirping away. That was the only explanation. The only thing that made sense was that another illusionist had gotten the better of him. Had snuck inside when he wasn't paying attention and planted a seed, an illusion that everything was fine, that it was okay to be happy, that New York would be safe. He had been arrogant, so confident in his own power that it had never occurred to him that another illusionist might be able to sneak in like a thief and, instead of stealing information away, left information for him to find. Now all he had to do was find it.

It hurt like nothing he'd ever experience as he sliced bits of himself away and then patched them back together again as he looked for that thread, the lingering piece of illusion and suggestion that had been left behind to keep him blind to them, to keep his attention elsewhere, to keep him from understanding until it was too late. Distantly he heard screaming, but he couldn't worry about that now. It was all he could do just to focus past the pain to do what need to be done. Another rip and another, like the talons of birds tearing at flesh, relentless as he continued the search until- minutes or hours later- he finally found what he was looking for and dug it out. It came out hard, kicking and screaming through him and ripping and tearing at anything it could as it was finally yanked free it was so deeply rooted within him. He'd probably have nightmares about that feeling forever, but it was worth it.

Worth it to pull it free and use this cheap trick, that paltry piece of illusion, to track it back to its master. To use it as a channel to send his own illusions zipping back into a mind not so different from his own but infinitely weaker, a pale shadow of what he was and what he would become. He shoved a lifetime worth of real illusions, pain and misery steeped in fear and rage and hate, down the throat of the illusionist who'd dared to work on his mind and it hurt. He'd never used his powers like this before and likely wouldn't have been able to at all if the little idiot hadn't left that hook in and underestimated him to such an extent. He left that other mind finally once it was whimpering and dying and fell back and away, drifting, exhausted back to his own body and mind.

If that little bastard didn't die, if he managed to fight through the onslaught and pull himself free, then he might become a true threat to them and Mukuro would enjoy gutting him in person. If not… well, he'd at least serve as an excellent example of what would happen if they tried to come for them again. Because this same cheap trick wouldn't work twice, he'd be far more vigilant going forward and next time he'd killed them, all of them, before they ever got close.

He came back to himself with Ken's hand in his mouth and the taste of blood on his tongue. A quick, exhausted mental order- that sent pain lancing through his already aching skull- removed the hand in short order. Ken smiled unsteadily down at him, shaking his bleeding hand out, completely heedless of the fact that he was spraying droplets of blood all over everything. "Hey boss, welcome back."

"Gross," Chikusa grumbled, from his position half-reclining in the armchair.

Mukuro glanced around and found he'd been laid down on the couch where Chikusa had previously been, "What…?"

"You scared the fuck out of us, asshole," Ken spat, punching him in the shoulder, having apparently forgotten about the fact that his hand was still bleeding and also having lost his mind in the process apparently.

"Did you seriously just punch me?" He asked tiredly, eyebrow twitching with the beginnings of irritation.

"Uh…. No?" Ken replied, grimacing. "No, I did not. You must be delirious with pain or something. Maybe blood loss. I mean, seriously, who would do that? I mean that's crazy. Only a crazy person would punch you and call you an asshole and I'm totally not a crazy person."

"Yeah. Fine, fine," Mukuro replied tiredly, letting his eyes fall closed. His head hurt a little less when he didn't have to look at things. "I knew what I was doing."

"Obviously. Do you mind releasing me so I can _interfere_ now, kid?" Lancia growled through obviously clenched teeth.

"Oh, yeah, that."

"Oh, yeah, _that_," Lancia grumbled in reply, sighing in relief as he rescinded the order and trashed the illusion that gave him the need to obey it. What felt like a wet, balled up shirt hit him in the chest with a splat, "You should get dressed, kid. You said we needed to go, I'm assuming that's still true?"

"Yes, they know where we are. They can come after us. Well, not so much that one or the one you threw off the roof, but any others that are with them could take a shot." Mukuro replied, with a half-hearted chuckle as he opened his eyes and sat up slowly, unsurprised when Ken's hand was on his back before he'd managed it, steadying and supporting him. He glanced down at the shirt that had fallen into his lap and found his chest covered in blood. "The hell?"

Ken sighed, scratching at the back of his head nervously with his free hand. "Ah, yeah, that's why we had to move you. You started bleeding from everywhere. It was…uh…."

"Scary," Chikusa finished for him. "Okay?"

"Yeah, just… overdid a bit, I guess."

"Lancia was freaking out because he couldn't get to you. Said you ordered him to stay over there with Chikusa. I had to move you onto the couch myself, prop you up and you were choking on that stupid t-shirt so that had to go too and then you kept screaming and gritting your teeth and I was afraid you were gonna bite your fucking tongue off or something so I just sort of shoved my hand in there, because there weren't any other good options and so…"

"Gross, Ken."

"Fucking _what?_ I'm sorry I didn't have time to find you another t-shirt to choke on."

Mukuro sighed and scratched at the drying blood, "This is… really disgusting. I'm getting a shower."

"Sure, that's a great plan, kid. You can barely sit up so, sure, why not go take a shower? You can slip in there, bash your head open and die. Best plan ever," Lancia replied, slamming a large bowl of water down on the table along with a couple of ragged hand towels. "Just clean up. You can shower later when we get wherever the hell we're going next. Any idea where that is?"

Mukuro nodded gingerly dipping one of the hand towels and wiping at the blood splashed across his chest, mostly just succeeding in moving it around.

So gross.

"India," he answered finally, ringing the towel out and dipping it back in the pink-tinted water.

"What the fuck is in India?"

"Does it matter?"

Lancia shrugged, "You're not really one for picking destinations out of a hat. Figured I oughta check this time, huh?"

"That's fair. It's a stepping stone," Mukuro replied, washing the back of his neck and wincing a bit as he stretched muscles that were quickly becoming sore and stiffening up from the earlier strain. "I've been looking into the CEDEF and I've found they have ties to an organization in Mumbai. If I can place a mark on someone with a real connection to them, I should have no trouble eventually infiltrating the organization itself."

"CEDEF, huh? You wanna go after Vongola? Ain't nothing like swinging for the fences, I suppose."

"Not right away, but eventually yes, and if I have a mark now that saves me some trouble down the road. Also, CEDEF gathers intelligence on most of the mafia, having a mark within their inner circle would be invaluable."

"Makes sense, I guess. You sure you're gonna be okay to travel?"

"Hardly, but I don't see another option. We need to leave New York before they have a chance to regroup and hit us again."

**-ooo-**

**KEN**

They managed to make it out of New York late the next morning. It hadn't taken them but a couple hours to pack their bags, make reservations on an outbound cargo ship and set a small, localized fire to destroy their little apartment and all the belongings they couldn't or wouldn't take with them. It had made him a little sad to watch as the pile they'd made of their furniture and stuff caught fire. He'd liked it here, but he liked them alive more than he liked New York. The apartment was just stuff and everything he truly valued was coming with him anyway.

Mukuro had been strange since the apartment, no longer jittery like he'd been before Lancia had brought Chikusa back home, but instead almost unbearably calm and strangely distant. Ken didn't like it. It felt like another thing Esterneo was stealing away from them. Reaching out from the grave like one of those awful fucking zombies in those shitty movies Lancia liked in order to snatch yet one more thing away from them. Fucking awful sons of bitches. So, he and Chikusa made a point of sticking close to him, crowding him in the taxi and on the ship and pointedly ignoring Mukuro's grumpy comments about being suffocated. For all his complaining, he hadn't ordered them away and that was as good as asking them to stay really.

He'd finally slumped exhausted against the wall in their little cabin and fallen asleep between them while Lancia was upstairs snagging some food for them from the kitchen. And that was good, he thought, because Lancia wasn't really involved in this shit and he didn't need to be.

"He's not going to bounce right back from this, is he?" Ken asked, softly careful not to speak too loudly. The last thing they wanted was for Mukuro to wake up while they were talking about him. He'd probably stab them both on just on general principle.

"No," Chikusa replied his voice equally soft with the faintest edge of concern. "I recognized him."

"Recognized who?"

"The boy on the roof, the one who shot me."

"Who is he?"

"He was in the room with us. We… he was the one we found in the hall. The dead one."

Ken snorted, "Oh, fuck you, it was not."

"Was."

"That kid is dead, Chikusa. Stop trying to fuck with me, it isn't funny."

Chikusa's lips quirked, "It is a little."

"Oh, fuck off," Ken replied, rolling his eyes. "Seriously, did you know him or not?"

"No. Thought he looked a little like that kid though, I don't know. It's been a long time. Maybe a brother or something?"

"Great. So maybe we weren't the only ones they were playing mad scientist with? Maybe that wasn't the only lab? Awesome. That's just great," Ken grumbled, letting his head drop back against the wall. Mukuro whimpered softly in his sleep, curling in on himself and Ken sighed, sliding a hand through Mukuro's soft dark hair. "What if there are more like me? Like you? Like Mukuro?"

"If they come for us, we kill them," Chikusa answered as if the answer were easy, obvious. "I don't care about them, just you two."

Ken smiled, Chikusa's words warming the ball of icy dread that had been sitting in his stomach since his conversation with Mukuro on the fire escape. "That simple, huh?"

"That simple. Idiot."

"Okay, they come for us, we'll kill the lot of them."

"Yes."

"Cool. I can handle that. What do you think Mumbai's like?"

"Hot?"

"Huh. Yeah, it probably is. I'll bet the food's awesome though."

"Yeah."

The door squealed loudly as Lancia shoved it open, his arms laden with bags that smelled fucking delicious and a bunch of water bottles. "Hey little monsters, I brought food." He dropped his voice a bit as he noticed Mukuro lying between them. "Oh, good, you got him to fall asleep. He looks like shit."

"Yeah. It's been a hell of a long couple of days," Ken replied. "Don't worry, he'll probably be back up and ordering you around in no time."

"Oh, happy fucking day," Lancia replied, digging in one of the bags and tossing a foil-wrapped package to each of them. "Because that was clearly a thing I was super concerned about. Eat a fucking hamburger, kid, and shut the hell up."

* * *

**NOTES:**

Much ado about language in this one and that'll come up again and again throughout the story, because if there is one oddity for me about the series that couldn't typically be practically addressed, it's the fact that about 50% of the cast are not Japanese, but everyone seems to speak it just fine. In fact, pretty much everybody BUT Tsunayoshi is by necessity multilingual. So, I spend some time on that.

It was my assumption (and thus also what happens in the story) that Mukuro and gang were not originally imprisoned in Vendicare and were actually imprisoned multiple times.

Also, it's worth mentioning that this chapter was actually originally intended to cover the events from the end of the previous chapter through basically the end of canon Reborn. As the length got to be entirely too much (it was actually longer than first four chapters combined), I broke it into three chapters instead.

**Next:** More prison! Also, M.M., Flan, CEDEF, Nagi, Birds and Tsunayoshi.


	6. What We Are

_"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep." _  
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

**THEN**

THE GANG  
ATLANTIC OCEAN  
2001

**LANCIA**

Mukuro had been pretty out of it since they'd gotten on the ship and he could say he wasn't completely freaking out about it, but that would be a lie. He remembered vaguely the low-grade terror of the fever when they'd escaped Traditore. The feel of that dry, burning skin beneath his fingers before he'd picked up his limp body and carried him the hell out of that shitty prison. But by the time they'd gotten on the ship the next morning, Mukuro's fever had been all but gone and he'd recovered easily and simply enough. He wasn't exactly sure what the fuck Mukuro had done to himself in their little apartment in New York or afterwards that made this exhaustion different, that made it worse, but the end result was making Traditore's little fever look like a walk in the park.

He'd been fine when they'd left New York, a little tired and a little more standoffish than usual maybe, but generally fine. He'd woken up shortly after Lancia had come back to the room with food and water from the little cafeteria that first day. He'd only taken a few bites of his hamburger before tossing it to Ken who was more than happy to finish it up, but that wasn't super weird. Mukuro went through phases where he'd eat twice as much as anyone else that alternated with phases where he'd hardly eat anything at all. He'd noticed Mukuro was quieter than usual too, but that also wasn't all that unusual. Mukuro had always been prone to mood swings and sometimes he'd ignore them for days on end in favor of whatever the hell he was orchestrating who the hell knew where. No, all of that shit had been pretty much par for the course, easy to write off as just moody teenage bullshit.

It wasn't until he was pulled out of a dead sleep later that night by a hand on his shoulder that he began to worry that something was really wrong. Mukuro stared down at him, his mismatched eyes shining in the weak orange light provided by the safety lights near the door of their cabin. He held a finger to lips before motioning for Lancia to follow him out into the hall. The hall was dark and long and the sound of the ocean was a constant companion as they walked down the length of it. Mukuro was silent the whole way and he made a point of walking several steps ahead. He noticed that Mukuro's feet were bare, but they slapped wetly against the grey floor leaving a trail of dark footprints behind him. Those feet seemed were so pale that they almost seemed to glow in that hall lit as it was only by moonlight and a thin weak strip of safety lights.

It seemed like they'd been walking forever and for no time at all without getting much of anywhere at all and Lancia frowned. "Since when do you need to get me out of the room to talk to me in private? You've never had a problem just barraging into my head in the past."

"Yes, well, this weekend has just been chalk full of firsts, hasn't it? What's one more?" Mukuro replied, his voice tired and a little hoarse. Probably from all the screaming when… _Nope._ He really wasn't thinking about that right now. Being concerned about Mukuro, being scared for Mukuro wasn't something he knew how to deal with. He had already decided he was going to shut those long moments of terror when he'd been locked in place, unable to help, unable to stop whatever was happening away in a box so he never had to look at it or think about it again. That box could pretty much be labeled '__Dumb/Awful Fucking Shit Mukuro's Done'__ already anyway, so at least it would have plenty of company.

"I'm not gonna lie, you're kind of freaking me out here, kid. If you want to push me overboard I'm pretty sure you can do it just as well downstairs as up on the deck and I'd rather save my strength for the swim back to New York if that's the case."

Mukuro chuckled, like the hiss of gas in a sealed room, "I have to burn all my contacts, all my old marks as I have no way of knowing what they know and what they don't. All the old accounts and properties have to go to. I'm having all the cash and new passports sent to post box in Mumbai. A woman will meet you at the pier when we dock. She'll know you by sight so you just need to wait for her. She'll supply you with the key to the box and an apartment rental."

Lancia paused, realizing they'd gotten up on deck at some point. The light was brighter here, the moon fuller and closer than he'd ever seen it before. A sense of terrible foreboding tugged at his senses, "Why are you telling me this?"

"Seemed prudent to have a back up plan. Plus, you're supposed to be Mukuro Rokudou, remember? Shouldn't you know these kinds of details?"

Lancia grunted, annoyed and the annoyance distracted him from what was really bothering him, "You know we've got a month before we actually get there, right? Why the hell are we out here talking about this at 2am like it's a big fucking secret? What's really going on, kid?"

"I like to plan ahead, Mr. Lancia, you know that." Mukuro leaned his folded arms against the white ship railing, he stared out at the endless ocean. "You've been good to us despite everything. You'll continue to keep them safe while I'm indisposed, won't you? I can trust you with that, I think, if nothing else."

Dread pooled in his stomach, cold and heavy, "What did you do?"

Mukuro shrugged, leaning forward and dropping his chin down against his folded arms. In the bright, bright moonlight he noticed for the first time that Mukuro's clothes looked new and red, a deep rich shade of red he'd never seen him wear before. Mukuro never appeared to care too much about his appearance, but in New York he'd tended to shop at second-hand stores. As far as Lancia was aware, everything Mukuro wore had been someone else's first, almost as if he couldn't quite stomach the idea of something that was exclusively his. "What I had to, Mr. Lancia, what was necessary. I discovered my house was infested with vermin so I burned it to the ground and started again. It's the only way to be sure. I just… need to rest for a while now. That's all."

"Mukuro…" he began, unsure how he meant to finish. In the end it didn't matter because the dream was already slipping away from him and Mukuro's half-smile was like smoke, thin and insubstantial and gone. He sat up with a start and was tossing the blankets aside and sliding over the edge of the bed to drop easily to the floor. He heard Ken startle awaken and Chikusa's surprised grunt as Ken no doubt smacked him again, "What's going on?" Ken asked groggy one second and then panicked the next. "Why the fuck does everything smell like blood?!"

"Fucking Mukuro," Lancia growled, slamming a hand against the kid's throat in search of a pulse. He couldn't see him well in the dim, but he could see the blood standing out dark against his pale skin. His pulse was strong and steady against his fingers, the skin reassuringly warm. "Chikusa get the lights on, Ken get the hell over here and help, I can't see shit so I can't tell if he's still bleeding or not."

The light flared bright and sudden as a bottle of water exploded against the switch. "Thanks, Chikusa," he grunted, rolling his eyes as he wiped a hand beneath Mukuro's nose and found the blood tacky, old enough that he wasn't bleeding from there anymore at least. He was leaning back against the wall and while he'd probably started out with his arms and legs pulled in against his chest, they'd fallen to either side when he passed out. There was some blood splashed across his shirt and trails running down from his ears, nose and the corners of his eyes, nothing quite as bad as what they'd seen in New York. So that was a relief. He brushed a hand across Mukuro's forehead, pushing the damp hair out of his eyes. Either his hands were cold or Mukuro's forehead was warm.

He shook his shoulder a little and Mukuro's eyes cracked open, just enough to stare at them like they were the weird ones. "What?"

"You're covered in blood again, kid."

"Am I?" Mukuro asked tiredly, yawning. "That's… nice?"

"It's not fucking nice, kid. You're freaking people out. Think you can stay awake long enough to clean up?"

"Sure, why not?" Mukuro replied and, of course, no sooner were the words out then he was back out again.

Lancia sighed heavily, turning to look at Ken who was hovering anxiously next to him. "You mind helping me get him cleaned up?"

"Nah, it's cool. I'd never be able to sleep with all this blood in here anyway," Ken replied. "Go ahead and go back to sleep, Kappa. We got this."

Chikusa nodded, lying back down on the bed he was sharing with Ken. He watched them silently, his cheek resting against his folded arms his gaze unfocused and vague without his glasses.

Some time later, they'd managed to get Mukuro about as clean as they could get him just using towels and water from the little bathroom in the corner of their room. Getting him out of his bloody shirt and into a fresh t-shirt was an experience Lancia was hoping to never repeat. He wasn't entirely certain how the fuck morticians did it, because if dressing a dead person was anything like dressing an unconscious teenage boy he'd rather fucking kill himself than have that job. And there was yet another comparison he'd never thought he'd have occasion to make.

Yawning, Lancia shoved the towels and Mukuro's bloodied clothes into one of the plastic bags he'd brought dinner back in and after tying his boots onto the handles to serve as a counterweight he shoved the bag outside their little porthole of a window and shut the little window down to a crack. "That gonna be okay or do you want me to chuck it out in the hall?"

"That's fine," Ken yawned, already crawling back into bed with Chikusa, who had fallen back to sleep while they were wrestling Mukuro into the t-shirt he was currently wearing. "Thanks, Lancia."

"No problem, kid. Get some sleep."

The problem was that when they'd woken up the next morning, Mukuro's forehead had gone from being a little warm to being blisteringly hot. All through the next day, he'd tossed and turned restlessly and mumbled and occasionally woken up just enough to drink something or eat something when they coaxed and poked and prodded him. Ken had been restless, pacing up and down their tiny room until Chikusa had finally dragged him out into the hall to go for a run. As afternoon turned into night, the fever didn't fade and Mukuro stopped waking up, he still mumbled occasionally and tossed and turned restlessly, but when Lancia shook him to try and get him up to drink some water he got a half-hearted mental swat for his trouble. Chikusa and Ken got back and they both climbed up next Mukuro sitting him up and falling in on either side of him to keep propped there between them.

"Does he feel like he's cooled off at all?" Lancia asked, flopping down on the bed Chikusa and Ken had previously claimed as their own so he could keep an eye on the three of them.

Chikusa touched tentative fingers to Mukuro's forehead and shook his head.

"It didn't last this long last time. It wasn't this bad. Maybe he's sick or something?" Ken commented, frowning as Mukuro shifted uneasily in his sleep, his head falling against Ken's shoulder as he settled down again.

"Can you brats even get sick?" Lancia asked, frowning because he'd never thought about it, but while he'd caught the occasional cold during the time they'd spent together, they'd never had so much as the fucking sniffles. Mukuro's fevers were the closest he'd seen any of them come to sick since Mukuro had taken him from the Cacciatore house all those years ago.

Chikusa and Ken exchanged a glance and Ken shrugged, "Don't know. I remember getting sick when I was little, maybe? I think? I don't know."

"I used to get sick a lot before," Chikusa murmured, brushing his fingers over the palm of Mukuro's hand where it lay limp and open against the blankets. "Haven't since."

He wanted to ask before what and, for once he thought he might even get a straight answer, but it felt too much like cheating. "Okay, so this is almost definitely because of him exhausting himself or overextending himself or whatever the fuck he did."

"Yeah, probably, I guess," Ken admitted and they all fell silent. There wasn't much to say really. If they were lucky the fever would subside soon enough and Mukuro would be back to normal, but… he thought back to that dream that probably hadn't been a dream at all or at least not just that.

Time passed and he hadn't even realized he'd passed out until he woke up, jolted from sleep by something he couldn't define. Ken and Chikusa had fallen asleep on either side of Mukuro. It had been awhile since he'd seen him like that, a couple months at least, and it would have been cute if Chikusa and Ken hadn't looked exhausted, if there had been tears slipping silently down Mukuro's cheeks.

It was those tears more than anything else had sent him ducking out of their cabin and running down the long corridors at who-the-fuck-even-knew o'clock in the morning to find the ship's doctor, because there had to be one. Of course there did. There weren't a crazy shit ton of people on board, but there were definitely enough passengers to warrant a doctor or two. Fuck. He hadn't even known Mukuro was capable of crying. He'd understood, distantly, that he probably could on a theoretical level, but it was like understanding that everything was made up of atoms. He got that it was true in theory, but he was pretty damn sure he'd never see the proof of it with his own eyes.

_Fuck._

Unfortunately, while most ships (even cargo ships) had a doctor of some sort or other on board, the quality probably varied greatly from ship to ship. At least, that's what he assumed, because he hoped they'd just drawn a fucking dud and drunks weren't the standard fare. It hadn't taken him long to find the bastard. Though he'd probably have found him even faster if he'd known to follow the smell.

The doctor on board the SS Ideal X was seventy if he was a day and looked like someone had rolled him out of a bar and directly onto the ship as a practical joke and he'd just sort of ended up stuck onboard when the ship set sail. He stank of too much vodka and too few showers, but since he was the only available option, Lancia grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back to their cabin to take a look at Mukuro anyway. Anything was better than watching that kid fucking cry. He figured with everything he'd been through in his life he was pretty much prepared to deal with anything, but not that. Not ever that.

"Whatcha think you're doing, son? I said I was coming." The drunk grumbled, weaving a little as Lancia encouraged him none to gently to move faster.

Lancia glared back at the man, clutching the red medical bag a little harder and reminding himself that the doctor needed to be conscious if he was going to be able to help. "You have kids, Doc?"

"Nope," the doctor replied, belching loudly and muttering a half-hearted 'excuse me' while he fanned the air in front of his face. "Never did meet the right gal."

"Well, good for you," Lancia replied gruffly, fingers tightening in the man's collar. "I've got three of the little fuckers and they're all a pain in my ass, but I like them alive a hell of a lot better than dead, so I need you to come and sort my oldest boy out. Right the hell now."

They hit the room and the Doc was still weaving a bit even just standing still. He squinted at the three boys huddled together on the bed and then glanced back at Lancia and then back and forth once more like he didn't quite believe what he was seeing. "These are yours?"

"Yeah. You got something to fucking say about it?" Lancia growled shoving the red bag he'd snagged from the doc's room into his arms. "Fix him already, asshole."

The doctor rolled his eyes, apparently used to this kind of abuse or too drunk to care. Lancia somehow managed to avoid strangling the fucker, but only because a drunken dipshit of a doctor was still better than no doctor at all. As the man bent down to examine Mukuro, Lancia closed his eyes and leaned against the wall by the door and counted to ten. And then did it again and again, slower each time. When he opened his eyes again, he didn't feel any better or calmer about it, but at least the examination appeared to be done.

"Fever's high. Too high. Gotta see if we can get that down," the doctor commented, belching again and giving another half-hearted apology as Ken flinched and wrinkled his nose and buried his face in Mukuro's hair. "Should be a tub around here somewhere though you might need to hit up the mates about where it's stored, Captain might know also, I don't know. Lukewarm bath will help manage it a little. I'm gonna give him an injection, just some Acetaminophen see if that helps. Kid got any allergies?"

"Not that I know of," Lancia replied, a little disconcerted to realize that they could all be deathly allergic to just about any damn thing and they probably had no better idea about it than he did judging by startled glance Ken and Chikusa exchanged. Of course, if they couldn't get sick, they probably didn't have allergies either. Wasn't much point in making little weapons of mass destruction and making them immune to the common cold if they were just gonna go down like sack of rocks the first time they caught a face full of wheat.

The doctor nodded, fiddling around in the bag until he pulled out a glass bottle. He squinted at the label and put it back. "Lukewarm bath and try to keep him comfortable. No blankets, no extra clothes, make sure whatever he's wearing is light. I'll be-" another belch "-be back to give him another dose in four hours. Keep an eye on him, come get me if wakes up complaining of any additional pain or if he vomits. Try and get him to drink some water if he wakes up long enough, wouldn't hurt to get some food in him either if you can. If this continues too long, I'll put him on an IV. That's about it." He finally seemed to find the bottle he was looking for, setting it aside and pulling out a big ass syringe that he filled with a dose of the liquid and jabbed carelessly into Mukuro's pale arm.

"Fuck," Ken muttered, looking away, his fingers white where they held the edge of Mukuro's sleeve.

It was a sentiment that Lancia could agree with whole-heartedly.

**-ooo-**

**KEN**

Everything got worse and better after the doctor had come and gone. Mukuro's fever went down a little, he seemed to settle so at least he wasn't crying anymore. Lancia had gone out after the doctor left and tracked down a big tin tub from somewhere and then gotten hot water from the kitchen to fill it with and a bunch of ice to dump in it in order to cool it down to whatever the hell was the right temperature. Mukuro woke up enough to strip down to his boxers and clamor clumsily into the tub, but they all had to take turns holding him up to keep him from falling asleep and sinking under the water while the others grabbed hot water or ice to keep the water from getting too hot or too cold. It gave them all something to do, besides sit around and stare at Mukuro and for him to hurry up and get better, but none of the three jobs were easy ones so they took turns.

They kept him in the tub for a couple hours at a time then they'd wake him up- he slept almost all the time now- and helped him out. Helped him get changed and propped him up so he could fall back asleep. More often than not they sat of either side of him. Sometimes they held his hands, but only sometimes and only when the room was dark. The fever was up the next time the doctor came. The man reeked of booze and piss and probably hadn't brushed his teeth in a week. Ken buried his face against Mukuro's hair again, and the ever-present scent of darkness and death beat the hell out of old drunk guy. He gave Mukuro another shot, gave them the same instructions again and took his unhelpful ass back to what Ken could only assume was the bottom of a bottle.

They took sleep in shifts, but no one really got any rest and he was pretty sure Lancia didn't sleep at all. Days passed like that and Mukuro would wake up occasionally, drink a little and eat a little here and there, but mostly he slept and sometimes he whispered and a few times he woke up screaming and nothing they said seemed to register at all.

One morning, a few days in and he wasn't sure how many because they'd started to blur together at some point, when it was his turn to sit beside the tub with an arm slung around Mukuro's chest and Mukuro's head lulling back against his shoulder, Mukuro woke up a little and looked at him with glittering, unfocused eyes. "I'm going to kill you all, you know," he murmured, his voice unsteady.

"Yeah, I know. You're a badass motherfucker, right?" Ken replied, because Mukuro had been muttering things like this for a while now. He knew Lancia and Chikusa hadn't been able to make out most of it, but his ears were better than most even without the cartridges in.

Mukuro frowned, "No, it's… not what I mean."

"I know, but it's okay, this wasn't your fault," Ken murmured, turning his head so he could press his cheek against Mukuro's bare shoulder. He was so thin, he'd always been so damn thin, but they didn't seem him without a shirt on often… or at all really, when he could help it. Mukuro always seemed like he thought of being naked as just another way to be vulnerable and, knowing him, he probably did. But he'd still him once or twice over the years and though he ate plenty normally, he never seemed to fill out any. Like what Mukuro was always used up more energy than he ever had to spare. Like it was eating him up from the inside out.

He wasn't stupid. He might not be smart in the same way Chikusa and Mukuro were, but he wasn't stupid. He knew what the stuff Mukuro had been muttering meant. It was half the reason he hadn't said anything about it to Chikusa or Lancia. Mukuro didn't talk about feelings and shit- not since they left the labs- he wouldn't like them knowing these things, any of these things. The fact that he was hearing them was unavoidable; the least he could do was keep Mukuro's secrets. "None of this is your fault."

Mukuro laughed and it made Ken's stomach ache, it was such a wretched, awful fucking sound. Like nothing was funny or would ever be funny again, like Mukuro was drowning in whatever he was feeling, in everything that had happened, everything that was happening. "It's always going to be like this. Always."

And why was he the one here for this? Why wasn't it Lancia? Lancia was good at making them feel better. Well, he was good at making him feel better anyway so he assumed he made Chikusa and Mukuro feel better too. They'd been raised in dark fucking rooms and sometimes they were still in those dark rooms where light only flooded in when someone was coming to hurt you again. Lancia had been raised in happier places, light-filled spaces that they'd flooded with darkness. It made them the bad guys for Lancia, he knew that, but Lancia still treated them pretty nice all the same. It made him better at cheering them up, at pulling them out of these sorts of funks, not that they fell into them often, just… he made sure they didn't. Mukuro's too hot forehead turned in against his throat as he fell back to sleep again.

"It's gonna… I mean, we're gonna be okay," Ken managed, awkwardly and not quite believably because he wasn't sure they would be. Chikusa was a mess, Mukuro was sick and he just wanted to hold on to them tight, so tight that they couldn't slip away from him, because that's what it felt like. It felt like they were being shut, one by one, back in those dark rooms, alone this time, each into their own private hell and that maybe this time they wouldn't be able to escape. Maybe they'd never escaped. Maybe everything since had been a dream of a better, different life and he'd wake up and he'd be back there again. Sore and bloodied and no one would bring Chikusa back to him and there would be no Mukuro to save them.

There would be no them to save.

He didn't realize he was crying until the door creaked open signaling Lancia's return. He dashed his free arm across his face; scrubbing away the worst of the tears, but not before Lancia saw them. He could tell that when Lancia sighed heavily, settling the bucket he held down on the floor at the foot of the tub. He slid around the metal basin until he could sit down on the low bunk beside where Ken knelt. He didn't say anything, just clapped one big hand against the back of Ken's head, ruffling his hair and just like that Ken was crying again, burying his face against Mukuro's shoulder to hide it even though he was pretty sure that the great heaving sobs gave it away.

He'd never been so damn scared in his life and that included the time they'd spent in the labs. The labs had been easy. He hadn't realized it at the time, but he hadn't had anything to lose then except his life and he hadn't cared so much about that. Then there had been Chikusa and he hadn't been scared because he'd been so frantic to protect him, to keep him safe. There had been a threat he could see and hate and a wall he could throw himself against when it got in the way. Then there had been Mukuro and there'd been three of them and they could do anything, they could hurt all the people who'd hurt them, they could keep each other safe. And now… now he had everything to lose. And he could absolutely lose everything, because he couldn't see a life for them without Mukuro in it that didn't end abruptly with them in prison for good this time or maybe back on a table in an Esterneo laboratory. He didn't know how to deal with Mukuro being vulnerable like this. Hadn't ever known what to make of Lancia's awkward kindnesses. Didn't know how to make Chikusa realize none of this was his fault either. Didn't know how to fix the things Esterneo had broken by not being as dead and gone as they'd hoped. Didn't even know if they could be fixed.

They'd just shown up, whoever the hell they were, and kicked over the life they'd managed to build for themselves and reduced it to so much sand and mud. Worst of all, he was pretty sure somewhere they were _laughing_ about it.

Fucking _assholes_.

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

CEDEF  
ITALY  
2001

**IEMITSU**

The place positively reeked of death, like years of rot and decay and other foul things had been trapped within these walls and had only been recently released allowing in just enough stale-ass oxygen to breathe. Which… was likely incredibly accurate judging by the state of this place. There were skeletons staked like corkwood on the back lawn, two more in one of the upstairs bedrooms and he was pretty sure that whatever the heck he was gonna find down in the bowels of this place, he wasn't gonna like it very much. He'd been to the house above once or twice when he was young, long before he'd joined CEDEF. Hell, he was pretty sure it had been when he was still in high school or maybe during his first years of college. It had definitely been before he'd met Nana (as he tended to view most events in his life in terms of as being 'Before Nana' or 'After Nana').

He'd come along with Nono when he'd traveled out this way to discuss something to do with weapon development with someone who worked here. At the time he hadn't really paid any attention beyond that, more interested in getting lunch and getting back to town and whatever girl he was dating at the time. Possibly Bianca of the yellow hair or Monique or Deirdre…eh, none of them were Nana, so what did it matter, really? Either way when all the shit went down with that possession bullet a few years later, he'd kind of wished he could have been bothered to pay attention. He didn't remember much about the people he met during those brief visits, just that they were really fucking excited about their science geek stuff. And apparently that enthusiasm had led them to make some pretty shady shit if that possession bullet was any measure of what they'd been up to.

He frowned again at the gaping darkness below before flicking on the torch in his hand and holding a handkerchief to his nose with his free hand. Sure, he could just send Basil in to assess the situation. What were apprentices for if you didn't make them do the shit jobs you didn't want to do yourself? But… this was interesting and there might be something down here that Basil who, while talented, was young and quite a bit more naïve than he himself had ever been just might miss. So, with that in mind, he descended into the lower levels of the former headquarters of the Esterneo in search of the answer to the question of what had happened here and why they were only learning about it now.

When he came back to the surface three hours later he found himself with more questions than answers, but with enough leads and ideas to get an investigation started. There were days when he really enjoyed his job, plenty when he hated it as well, but definitely also days when he was pretty sure he had the greatest job on the whole damn planet. His breath fogged the air in front of him as he stepped out of the house into the brisk December air. It seemed strange that the labs beneath Esterneo should be so much warmer than the air outside. Another mystery for the pile and he tucked his torch and handkerchief back into his bag with the samples he'd collected from below, careful to put them in a different pocket where the heavy-duty flashlight wouldn't bang up against either his camera or the glass vials containing the blood scrapings he'd taken. If he never had to go back down there again it would be too soon, he sure as shit didn't want to have to do it because he'd been careless with his samples. Equipment secured, he made his way across the lawn to where his companions were loitering around their rental.

"Where'd this tip come from again?" He called to Basil once he was within easy shouting distance. Basil straightened like a shot as if he'd been caught slacking off just because he was leaning against the car. Man, that kid was weird. Turmeric didn't bother to move at all, unwilling to be bothered until there was actually something to bother about.

"Oregano. She had it from an informant within Vendicare who learned the Vindice were traveling en masse to investigate a crime committed at the Esterneo compound. It is currently unknown from whence the Vindice acquired their information."

Iemitsu nodded, stripping off the gloves he'd put on before heading down into the labs and tucking them away in his jacket. And there was absolutely no denying that's what that underground maze of halls and rooms had been. If he hadn't seen so much nasty shit in his time as the head of CEDEF he'd have been truly horrified by what he'd seen down there, by what all of those tiny restraints and child-size reclining surgery chairs meant. "Whatever happened here, it happened a long time ago. More than a few years, I'd say, as there isn't much left of the bodies down there besides bone and some truly disgusting stains." He turned his glance from his apprentice to the man standing beside him, "Any theories on why they didn't pick this up sooner?"

Shrugging his big shoulders, Turmeric burying his hands in the pockets of his heavy winter coat. Couldn't blame him for that. It was cold as a witch's tits this year, cold enough that he wished his own jacket were a bit thicker even if he'd have been sweltering in anything heavier while he'd been downstairs. He wondered vaguely if it were as cold as this in Japan, how warm and cozy it would be to have Nana snuggled up beside him right now.

Mm. __Nana___._

Turmeric's voice cut into the beginnings of a particularly fun daydream about Nana, a cabin and hot toddies and Iemitsu frowned at the interruption even though he'd been the one to ask the question in the first place. "No, I have no current theories on this matter. It seems unlikely that the Vindice simply missed the disappearance of an entire Famiglia and yet as far as we've been able to discern they haven't seen fit to investigate anything as it pertains to the Esterneo Famiglia since the Possession bullet incident. Nor do they appear to have identified any perpetrators or imprisoned any parties deemed to be responsible for or even implicated in the crimes that clearly occurred here."

"Well, that's just damn weird, isn't it? Usually something as grisly as this looks to have been happens and the Vindice are all over it like flies on shit, but this… there are like forty bodies down there and just from looking at what little evidence is left after all this time and after the Vindice have been and gone, you can tell that they didn't die easily. So, what or who covered this crime scene up so thoroughly that even the Vindice couldn't see through to the truth of it? And why did they allow it to be discovered now?"

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

THE GANG  
ATLANTIC OCEAN  
2001

**CHIKUSA**

Mukuro was going to die.

He was going to die and it was their fault.

No.

His fault.

His.

He couldn't think past the panic in his head. He'd replayed that night, those moments over and over and over again, but he couldn't find a conclusion that didn't revolve around him being sloppy, him making a mistake. He had let his guard down, he had been distracted and he had gotten himself shot. If Lancia hadn't been there, he'd be dead. He knew that with the same surety as he knew that he couldn't see a life without them in it. He would have tried to recover, to kill that kid, but he would have failed and he would have died. Then they would have died, because they wouldn't have known what happened, wouldn't have known to run.

And that would have been worse. All of them dead would have been worse, but now… Mukuro was sick and there wasn't anything they could do and that was his fault. He was almost certainly sick because of whatever he'd done in order to keep them safe long enough to get them out of New York. So this was his fault. His fault. His…

"Hey, knock it off," Ken grumbled, bumping him with his shoulder. "I can just about feel you thinking about it and this isn't your fault."

"It is."

"It _isn't_. You didn't ask those assholes to try and kill you. And Mukuro had to do what he did. If he didn't think it was something he had to do he wouldn't have done it. He's not exactly the type of guy who just jumps out into traffic for the hell of it. His plans have plans that plan to have plans. It's gonna be fine. He's gonna be fine. He's always fine. He's just… you know he gets like this when he's overused his powers. He just really, really, really overdid it this time. And, honestly, I mean, even if he did die- which ain't gonna fucking happen obviously- he'd probably just come back again with another number in his eye and another freaky power or two."

"Shut up." Chikusa murmured, bumping Ken's shoulder back. "I get it."

"Good, you better. Lancia will totally beat your ass if he catches you moping around like this."

"Would not."

"Would _so_."

"Shut the fuck up, both of you," Lancia grumbled, nudging the door open and slipping back into the room with another bucket of ice to add to the too warm tub. "Or I'll beat both your asses and toss you out to go play on the deck. Like he needs to be fighting off a fever and listening to you two bicker like old ladies at a yard sale. Go sit the fuck down and stop worrying so damn much. The little bastard is too tough to die from something like this."

The doctor had recommended the bath, for all the good it actually seemed to be doing which was not much at all, but he seemed to think it was a good option nonetheless. However, since water couldn't be allowed to get too cold or too warm they were constantly fighting a losing battle with keeping the water at around twenty-eight degrees Celsius; a glance at the tub highlighted a number of variables that indicated that the water was currently seven degrees too warm.

"What'd the doctor say?" Ken asked, his fingers curling around Chikusa's shoulder and pulling him back towards their bunk so that Lancia could get to the tub.

"About a quarter of the bucket ought to do it," Chikusa murmured and Lancia nodded distractedly, taking his advice as fact and adding a fourth of the bucket's water to the tub.

"Same damn thing that drunk bastard always says. Keep him cool, keep him comfortable, put him the bath again if he seems uncomfortable and try not to let him drown. He's supposed to be by to check on him in an hour when it's time to change the IV again." His expression softened a little bit as he looked at them and Chikusa wasn't sure what to make of that. Did they look as scared as he felt? Did Lancia pity him? Them? Was that why he was helping out? He'd never really understood Lancia. Why he was here, why he stayed, why he was helping Mukuro recover. None of it really made any sense. He didn't understand Lancia's hand as it settled against his head or the brief tight smile he offered him before he moved around to settle down next to the tub to take his turn at making sure Mukuro didn't accidently slip down below the water's surface. "He's gonna be okay. I told you already, he's a tough kid and the doc said he was improving."

Chikusa wondered about that. The doctor hadn't seemed to think so the last time he'd been in the room. His face had been flushed and his eyes red and bleary as if he were peering at them through a fog caused by the scent of alcohol that had practically been wafting off of him. Ken had actually tucked himself behind him, burying his face against the back of Chikusa's neck, grumbling about the stench. Since none of them had showered and only Mukuro had really bathed in the last few days, he couldn't imagine he really smelled that much better, but Ken had always seemed to like the way he smelled just fine regardless of how often he showered. He wasn't sure how that worked, but he'd decided a long time ago to just to accept it rather than question it. And he'd be lying if he said he didn't like that. Didn't like the way Ken's face felt against the back of his neck or pressed against his shoulder. Always had, since the very beginning.

Their terrible excuse for a doctor hadn't seemed to think much of Mukuro's chances at all after several days of unrelenting and worsening fever, but Lancia had bullied the man into what advice and medicine he had given them. The man had called doling out more medicine and giving him whatever was in the IV bag a waste and Chikusa had wanted to kill him, hurt him or perhaps just toss him overboard. Lancia had just gripped the man's shoulder and informed him in a soft, deadly tone that if Mukuro didn't make it, neither would the doctor so he'd better get back on task.

He didn't understand Lancia at _all_.

Mukuro shifted restlessly in sleep, his breathing a little labored and Lancia made a shushing sound, his fingers sweeping across Mukuro's pale forehead.

Chikusa couldn't even really _pretend _to understand Lancia. He'd never be able to understood how someone who had lost so much to them could seem to also care so much about what happened to them. Lancia was a bundle of contradictions and he could never bring himself to totally trust him, but he also couldn't say he wasn't grateful for it. He didn't really understand how Mukuro's power worked in relation to Lancia these days, but he knew that Mukuro didn't control him as much these days, didn't need to, Lancia just… helped them. They'd all have been dead a dozen times over during the last two years if it hadn't been for Lancia. And there was something about that made Chikusa feel very, very tired, because they'd never deserved that kind of loyalty from anyone but each other and yet they had it and it felt awful sometimes. To have someone like Lancia, who had every reason not to, but who still tried his best to take care of them anyway. Sometimes Chikusa wondered why, but he never asked. Maybe he was afraid of the answer. Maybe he was afraid it would all vanish if he looked at it too closely, asked about it too often, and they'd lose this strange illusion of family they'd all built together. Whatever it was, he was certain that one day Lancia would leave them, betray and abandon them. He wasn't one of them even if he'd saved their lives a few times, even if Ken so obviously adored him, even if Chikusa sometimes liked having him around.

Nothing lasted forever, after all, especially not for them.

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

THE GANG  
STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR  
2001

**MUKURO**

Mukuro slept and while he slept he dreamed, feverish and bright. He dreamed of death, of pain, of talons ripping him apart from the inside out, bursting into the air and flying away on wings made of darkness and secrets stealing vital bits of himself away.

He stood in a sea of blood under a sky of unrelenting darkness while a cool breeze sent his hair blowing across his face, streaming out behind him, occasionally whipped back into his eyes by an irate turn of the wind. He almost never wore his hair down, but he'd never bothered to cut it either. He tried once, held the scissors open over a hank of hair for long moments before finally relenting and dropping the scissors unused in the sink. Something about the idea of cutting away another piece of himself, however insignificant it might be, was too much to bear. Nails were clipped for the sake of practicality, but hair… it was a simple enough matter to clip it, to pin it or to tie it back if it was bothersome. There was no need to cut it, at least not now, not yet, maybe someday, but not now.

In his dreams, his hair was always down, longer than it actually was in reality, always slipping around him, often obscuring his vision. Sometimes it seemed like protection; sometimes it seemed like just another way to conceal the world, another way to lie. Through that billowing hair, he could see bodies floating by him in stuttering stops and starts bobbing across the waves towards some unseen shore. He had killed so many people over the years that most didn't look but passingly familiar, virtual strangers, with recognizable wounds. He knew some, of course, there were some he'd always remember. The ones that had incited him to rage, the ones he'd made to hurt before finally killing them, the ones he'd enjoyed destroying. But there were… others too. Those children from Esterneo, the ones he hadn't known and hadn't cared to know or save who'd died in the lab halls. Lancia… dressed in that fancy, fitted suit he'd been wearing when they first met. Ken and Chikusa, worst of all, and he tried to reach out and touch them, pull them from the sea, bring them back to him, but they were always just out of reach. His fingertips brushed against the soft worn wool of Chikusa's hat, against the faded cotton of Ken's idiotic 'I'm with Stupid' t-shirt.

As they drifted away, he felt himself sinking into that sea of blood, being sucked beneath the waves down into the fathomless darkness below and he almost welcomed that feeling. He remembered, inanely, how Lancia used to bring DVDs home from the shop he worked at in New York and how they'd all sit together some nights, sprawled on the couch or in the chair or across the floor, and watch them. Lancia brought all types of movies home, the most random things and never the same type twice in a row. He liked horror and crime movies best while Ken preferred action and adventure movies and often quoted particularly corny lines for days and weeks after they watched them. Chikusa was partial to fantasy and mysteries and he himself always enjoyed the comedies best even though they seldom truly made him laugh.

There had been one movie in particular, some fantasy thing about a boy and a book and the nature of stories, but what he remembered most about it was a scene where the boy in the story loses his best friend in a swamp where your grief pulls you down and swallows you whole and only you can overcome it, but you have to be willing. You have to want to move past your despair. And at the time he didn't understand the idea of being unwilling, unable to move beyond some point in your life anymore than he'd understood the boy's instance that his friend should move because he loves him and he doesn't want him to quit, that he can't give up because the boy loves him. But then love has always been a strange and distant concept for him. He understands it on an intellectual level, knows that love drives people to do both great and terrible things. But it's a foreign emotion, something that while it exists for others, it isn't something he feels or longs for or thinks of but in passing or in devising ways he might use one person's love to harm another.

Now it's all he can think of, because he is sinking inexorably beneath the bloody surface of this terrible sea. He's unable to move on, unable to breathe past this moment, to bear to exist after Ken and Chikusa and even Lancia are gone from him and he is left alone, truly alone, in every way that matters. Because what good is vengeance if he's misplaced the most vital pieces of himself in seeking it? Better he drown here, sink beneath the blood of the many, many corpses he's left in his wake and slip down into the welcoming darkness. Better to be just another corpse from the pile he's left in his wake if his path would only lead to their destruction. He had almost gotten Chikusa killed with his vanity, his carelessness. And now he dreams relentlessly of worlds in which that was the outcome. That he was capable of nothing but murder and pain and death, that he is the darkness that consumes those he needs the most, those pieces of himself he… values most.

And as he slept, as he dreamt through the fever and sickness that ravaged his physical form, his priorities shifted. Vengeance, well, vengeance and destruction were still high on the list, but first… first he needed to keep them safe.

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

THE GANG  
MEDITERRANEAN SEA  
2001

**LANCIA**

He wished he knew what the fuck he was supposed to say or do to make this better for any of them. To make Ken stop crying (and goddamn, but that had been a horrifying fucking sight) or assuage the guilt that was practically radiating off Chikusa or just deal with sick feverish Mukuro (who was positively chatty and freaking everybody out whenever he was awake, which thankfully wasn't often). He just… had no idea how to deal with any of this shit. It was like they'd all become different people in the week since they'd fled New York- and there was no mistaking it for anything but fleeing- and all he knew for sure and for certain was that it had been that damn word that did it. That damn word and whatever it represented was to blame for everything that had happened that day; that was happening still.

Esterneo.

He'd known for a while that Esterneo was probably where the kids came from. What he didn't know, what he clearly needed to fucking know, was why that name was enough to send them running. These kids who had murdered more people than he probably would ever know about, that didn't seem to fear much of fucking anything, but were falling to pieces because of that one damn word and whatever unspoken threat came with it. Whatever it was that had made Mukuro do whatever the crazy fuck he'd done to himself.

"What did they do to you, huh? Hell, what did _you_ do to you?" He asked softly, running a hand over Mukuro's too warm forehead. It had been a damn week and it was still too damn warm.

He didn't expect an answer and he didn't get one. What he got instead was the creeping sensation of Mukuro's presence and a sound like the crackle of paper burning.

Who the fuck even knew what that was supposed to mean or if it was supposed to mean anything at all.

After the first few days of frantic concern and activity, the three of them had fallen into a rhythm as Mukuro twitched and shifted and grumbled his way through his fever. They took turns staying with him, making sure he was cool, that he hadn't shifted the needle in his hand. He'd flailed awake a few times the day it'd been put in and accidently knocked the damn thing right out and on the third day after it'd been put in he'd woken up enough to glare at it and actually just yank the damn thing out as if it had offended him. His pale arm was a map of vivid bruises and scabbing wounds that had them all wincing every time he so much as moved it now.

He seemed like he was getting better at least, the fever was down at least. He still slept constantly and the few times they'd coaxed him awake he hadn't been particularly with it, but he hadn't thrown up on anyone in the last day or so which was a nice change of pace. He'd gone and used the bathroom within falling into anything or taking a swing at anyone and then come back and curled up against the wall and gone back to sleep. Since it seemed more like he was actually sleeping rather than passing out they'd mostly just left him to it only jostling him awake to drink or try and eat something twice that day. When they were in the room Chikusa and Ken sat up on either side of him like there was nowhere they'd rather be, when they weren't, Lancia had made a habit of propping pillows on either side of the brat, but still sitting on the bed within easy reach so he'd be able to grab the kid if he looked like he was about to knock out that damn IV again.

"You're gonna be okay," he commented, more to himself than to Mukuro. "The doctor sucks, but you're too much of a pain in my ass to stay down for long. It's gonna be fine."

"I'm tried of dying, Mr. Lancia," Mukuro mumbled, his eyes cracking open to stare in his direction, bleary and unfocused.

Lancia snorted, turning his head against the wall to face him. "Don't be so fucking melodramatic, brat, you're not gonna die unless I decide to kill you."

"That wouldn't go well for you," Mukuro replied, coughing weakly.

"Water?"

"Yeah."

He handed Mukuro a bottle of water, held it steady when his hands shook a little trying to drink it. "You seem a little more coherent than you have been."

Mukuro snorted, ignoring the comment and flopping back boneless against the bunk. "This room is _freezing_."

"Nope, you're just hot as hell, kid."

Mukuro waved a hand in his direction, stretching and throwing his legs out so that his bony heels crashed down against Lancia's knee. "Did you know that hell isn't actually hot? Everyone thinks it is, but it's not. It's not anything really. Just reliving the same mistakes over and over again at maximum volume."

"Is it now?"

"Pretty much. It's different, I mean, depending on the path, but… pretty much that. It hurts… it always hurts though. I'm really tired, Mr. Lancia." He whispered the last and Lancia sighed patting Mukuro's jean-clad shin. "I'm always so tired."

"Then get some sleep, kid."

"Okay, thanks," Mukuro replied, his eyes already drifting shut.

Well, now he _knew_ the little bastard was still delirious. He'd never thank him if he were in his right damn mind. Lancia sighed, scrubbing his palm over his face and closing his eyes.

He awoke to screaming and Mukuro's bare foot kicking him so hard in the face it felt like it broke his fucking nose. "Mother of _fuck_, Mukuro," he snapped, reaching out to snag the flailing limps before Mukuro could kick him again with his bony ass feet. He slapped a hand hard against Mukuro's shin, "Wake the hell up already!"

Mukuro's eyes snapped open, unfocused and angry.

"What?" He hissed, gripping his head as if even that much motion hurt. Hell, maybe it did.

"You were screaming your head off and I think you broke my fucking nose. People are gonna think I was trying to murder you."

Mukuro looked at him through tired, narrow eyes and it was the most he'd seemed like himself in the week they'd been on the damn boat. "Serves you right for being close enough to get kicked."

"Well now, there's the asshole I know and loathe," Lancia grumbled, poking gingerly at his aching nose. No blood at least, so that was something. "Welcome back, Sunshine."

Mukuro cleared his throat, wincing and propping himself up on his elbows so he could glare at Lancia properly. "Why do I feel like I've spent three days in a tumble dryer? Where's the water? Also, why the heck is there a needle in my arm?"

"It was really more like a week and you've got an IV because you had a couple of days there where you threw back up most of what little we got you to actually eat and drink. And here's the water, I hope you choke on it."

"Charming," Mukuro replied, sitting all the way up and taking the water bottle from him with surprisingly steady hands and twisting the cap off. "Where are they?"

"Chikusa and Ken?"

"_Really_, Lancia? Who _else _would I be asking about?"

"Wow, you've been back to your old self for less than two minutes and I already miss Sick Mukuro. Sure, we had to help him do ever damn thing, but he wasn't a total dick about it. I sent them up to get something to eat. Any chance you're gonna tell me what the hell this was all about?"

"What _what _was all about?"

"_Really_, Mukuro? What the fuck _else_ would I be asking about? Esterneo."

"No. No, there's not. It has nothing to do with you, Mr. Lancia."

"Yeah, _obviously_."

"A little less sarcasm, if you please, it's early yet."

"You want less sarcasm, your majesty? Try telling me the truth for once in your life instead of leaving me in the dark about shit that's inevitably going to end up coming up out of nowhere to _kill us_. _That'd _be a nice change of pace."

"You want truth from me, Mr. Lancia? Do you _really_?" Mukuro asked and his eyes had an almost manic light to them though whether that was a residual from the fever or something else entirely Lancia had no damn idea. He leaned forward placing the bottle of water on the floor beside the bed, a wide insincere smile curving his chapped lips. "Truth is so varied and so subjective, Mr. Lancia. One person's truth isn't actually ever the _real _truth of any matter. For instance, I enjoyed killing your family. It gave me great pleasure to use you as the instrument of their destruction. I came upon your boss as he lay dying and he told me to run, told me that you'd gone mad. He believed what his eyes told him, that it was you and not me who killed him, killed all of them. Do you want to know how many times over the course of that year I looked into his face with your eyes and he couldn't tell the difference? I wasn't good at it at first, the possession thing, it's not a simple thing to become someone else. It was easier if the person I possessed was cruel, I can be cruel, but I have never understood what it is to be kind. I probably never will. But understand it or no, I do know it when I see it. And you are kind, Lancia, you always have been. I thought for certain I'd be caught, that they'd be able to see through the lie I made of you. You loved them so much and if they loved you half as well then surely they would _know_ you. They would be able to see to the heart of me and see that I was not you. Because I can't be anything, but what I am at the core. What they made me. I am not _good_ and I am not _kind_, but I am cruel and I am ruthless and I will destroy everyone and everything in my path. Do you know that when I told him the truth, he begged me to let you go? But that, of course, was something I could not do. Could never do. It isn't in my nature to relinquish an advantage, after all. So, tell me, Lancia, how will telling you the truth work to my advantage? Tell me how you, who were so easily mislead and enslaved by a green, untrained _child_, could possibly stand against the horrors that made the monster that ruined your life? The truth is that the circumstances that made us are not who we are even if they are the why of it. Esterneo is not and never will be your concern, Mr. Lancia. And you should _thank_ me for that. Knowing what was done to us will never make what I did to you easier to understand. Was that enough truth for you? Or would you like some more?"

Lancia swallowed and forced a smile and pretended that his eyes weren't blurry with unshed tears. "Nah, I think I've had about all the truth I can stomach for one day, kid."

"Then perhaps you would return the favor, because for the life of me I can not understand how it is that I'm still alive. I've done terrible things to you and I've made you do terrible things. I will make you do far more terrible things before we're done and you _must _know that. You know what I am better than anyone. You shouldn't have any illusions left about who I am or what I will do. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to kill me or even just to let me die. Chances are no one would have even known besides you if I've been as sick as you say. Ken and Chikusa were naive enough to trust in your good nature and they probably left you alone with me time and time again while I was unable to defend myself. It would have been a very simple matter to just end it. You would have been free and I would have been gone." Mukuro tilted his head to the side, his expression a mask of pleasant, good-natured confusion. "So, why didn't you do it, Mr. Lancia? Were you afraid? Were you too weak? I could find the truth for myself, of course. I could dig the truth from your mind as easily as peeling a grape, but I'd rather hear it from you."

He'd like to say he hadn't thought about it. That the thought of killing Mukuro had just simply never occurred to him. That he hadn't sat up one night while Ken and Chikusa slept and thought about just putting a hand over his face or letting him slip beneath the water of the tub. That he hadn't realized he could have killed him fifty times over in a dozen different ways during the last week or so. It hadn't been his first instinct, but the days and nights were long when you were looking after a sick person, especially when that sick person was someone like _him_. He chuckled and wiped a hand over his face before offering him a thin smile, "It's like you said, Mukuro. We can only be what we are. And killing a defenseless kid just ain't in my fucking nature even if he has does some pretty horrible fucking things."

"I suppose I'm fortunate that that is the case."

It wasn't a thank you or an absolution or a condemnation, just a concession of fact.

"I suppose you are," Lancia sighed, shoving himself to his feet. "I'm gonna go get the doctor to take that IV out of your arm before you use it to poke someone's eye out. Try not to keel over and die while I'm gone. If I'm gonna be blamed for killing you, I'd rather have actually done the deed."

"I'll keep that in mind," Mukuro replied, lying back down on his side, the bruised and battered arm with the IV held out and away from his body, his gaze fixing firmly on the far wall.

Lancia shook his head and turned to leave the room, he got as far as the door when Mukuro's voice cut through the silence that had fallen so briefly between them. His tone soft, almost gentle, "Lancia?"

"Yeah, kid?"

"I make it a point to remember things. I remember everything… even the ugly things, the terrible things, maybe those especially. So, I remember every moment of what I did to your family. Every broken bone I caused, every bruise I inflicted, every cut, every scream and cry and curse. Everything. I remember what it felt like to snuff out the life of each and every person in that house. It was your body, but I'm the only one who remembers. "

Lancia closed his eyes and leaned a hand against the door waiting for the point, because Mukuro wouldn't go to all the trouble of telling him something he already knew or could have guessed just for shock value. He didn't have to wait long as Mukuro continued, his voice soft as a promise between old friends or enemies.

"If you choose to ask me about Esterneo or what was done to us again, Lancia, I will show you the truth. All of it. Every last screaming, writhing, black and terrible truth that lives within me. Do we understand each other?"

"Yeah," Lancia murmured, a wry, bitter smile curving his lips. And he thought maybe for the first time in their short, painful history together that maybe they finally, truly did.

Lancia slammed the door between them and walked away, his long legs eating up the distance between their cabin and doc's office.

**-ooo-**

He didn't rush so by the time he actually returned to their cabin with the doctor, Ken and Chikusa were already back… and standing together in the far corner near the door about as far as they could be from Mukuro without actually leaving the room. Which would have seemed weird if he hadn't been able to tell they were being controlled. But if they weren't, there would have been no force on the whole damn planet that would have kept them from his side. He leaned back against the wall beside them, watching impatiently while the doctor grumbled and mumbled and took Mukuro's temperature and yanked the IV out of his arm and packed up his shit and left with a cursory 'glad you're feeling better, son'.

As soon as the door slammed, Lancia gestured to the teenagers in the corner. "So, what the fuck am I looking at here exactly?"

Mukuro glared up at him with an expression pretty damn close to panic, "I _can't_."

"You can't what?"

"They're…" He looked at them briefly and shuddered, "I can't."

"Okay. You know what? I'm way too fucking tired to deal with your crazy right now. Let's try this a different way. What do you need me to do?"

"Get them out of here before I…" Mukuro broke off looking away, his fingers dancing nervously over the trident he was holding in his lap. And Lancia really didn't want to know why he had that damn thing out. It had been in Mukuro's bag since they'd left New York.

"Okay, I'm gonna take them out of here. Do you think you can let them go once we're out the door?"

Mukuro nodded, once quick and abrupt.

"Okay, we'll do that. Did they say anything to you when they came in? Did they see you?"

"I don't… no. I don't know. Just…"

"Okay, I'll talk to them. What do you need in order to not freak out all over them again?"

"_Less_," Mukuro replied, his voice hoarse and scratchy in a way it hadn't been when they'd spoken earlier. "Just... less. I need them not to care so much."

Lancia sighed, shaking his head and opening the door and ushering Ken and Chikusa out. "You've got _problems_, kid."

"You say that as if it's _news_."

"Long as we're clear. I'll see what I can do."

He wasn't sure how he'd expected them to react when he told them Mukuro was awake, hadn't been able to deal with them caring so much about him and freaked out. Or that they were gonna need to dial it back and be less excited to see him if they wanted to go back in there. He definitely hadn't expected them both to nod like that was something that they expected. Like it made all the fucking sense in the world that the third wheel on their crazy little friendship tricycle couldn't handle them _caring_ about him.

"Seriously?" He asked them, rubbing at the back of his head with one hand. He really should just resign himself to the fact that he was just never gonna understand these fucking kids.

"Yeah, it's cool," Ken replied, shoving his hands in his pockets unable to contain his big damn grin. "He doesn't like that kind of thing. We'll run a couple laps around the ship before we go back in. Can't care too much when we're tired and the news has had time to sink in, right? Anyway, it's not a big deal. So, he's really okay?"

"I don't know if I'd call it okay, but he seems to be feeling better at any rate."

Chikusa smiled, thin and cool and undeniably thrilled, "Good."

"Yeah, don't get too excited about it, he's still the blackest little fucking rain cloud in all the land and he ain't back to anything I'd call normal yet, even for him, but the fever's gone and he's cranky so he's probably well on his way. I'm gonna go grab him something to eat before he decides to find an oven and bake up some children. Have a good run. Try not to like him too much when you head back in, I don't want to come back in there and find you two standing in the corner again. It's fucking creepy."

"He stood us in the corner?" Ken replied, pulling a face. "Seriously?"

"Well, in his defense, it isn't a very big cabin and he probably thought that was less awkward than shoving you both in that teeny tiny bathroom."

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

THE GANG  
THE RED SEA  
2001

**LANCIA**

"Ken Joshima, why the ever-loving fuck did five people stop me in the cafeteria today to tell me 'Congratulations'? And why did one of them add that he was 'glad I'd stuck it to the crazy bitch'? What the hell have you been telling people?"

"Well, I had to tell them something, didn't I? Mukuro isn't in any kind of shape to do his '_t___hese aren't the droids you're looking__' for thing," Ken waggled his fingers at them. Chikusa rolled his eyes and Ken pulled a face at him, "And Chikusa never says _anything_ and you just kind of grunt and glare at people. It looks fucking _weird_ that you're traveling with three kids like half your age especially since one of them has been super sick and confined to the room since we got on board. Seriously, fucking weird and people kept asking questions. Like questions of the '_blink five times if you're in trouble and you need me to call the cops_' variety, you know? So I made up a story. Seemed like the most sensible thing to do."

"First, how the fuck old do you think I am? You are not half my damn age. Second, we're in the middle of the ocean, I'm pretty sure we don't have to worry about cops out here."

"But they could lock you in the brig or something."

"You watch too many movies and I don't even think cargo ships have brigs, but okay, sure. Let's skip that part and get to the part where you tell me what the fuck you actually told them."

"Oh, right!" Ken bounced on his heels, excited and clearly incredibly proud of himself which inevitably meant that whatever was about to come out of his mouth was something none of them were going to enjoy. Ken had a tendency to embellish and he liked making things up. He really, really liked making things up. "So I told them you were our Dad and you'd had me with your childhood sweetheart and dropped out of high school to take care of me even though you were still just a kid yourself and my mom died a couple years ago so it had just been you and me for a while. Then you found out that you'd had twins with a woman you'd had a one-night-stand with like around the same time my Mom was pregnant with me. So, you'd been trying to do right by them and when their mother died last year, you got custody of them, but their crazy grandmother was fighting you on it and you were totally fucking scared that she'd do something to hurt them because she's super crazy and dead set on the idea that if she can't have them no one can. So, even though the court case is in appeal and you've been allowing her visitation you decided to take us and flee the country to keep them safe. Only you weren't quite fast enough since she managed to poison Mukuro before he left her house the day we left New York. Chikusa would probably be sick too, but he chose to skip breakfast that morning because he was nervous about leaving."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Chikusa commented, rolling his eyes and disappearing back behind a magazine… which he'd probably stolen from the cafeteria or one of the other passengers since they hadn't really been flush with cash when they left New York and food and tickets had pretty much decimated what cash they did have on them.

"Seriously. What the hell, kid? I don't think you could have come up with a more unrealistic, completely bullshit fucking story than that if you'd actually been _trying_."

"What? I've seen stuff like that all the time on TV! That kind of thing totally happens all the time."

Chikusa snorted, "On soap operas, maybe."

"Shut up, Kappa! Like you would know."

"You're killing me, kid. Okay, _fine_, so you're all my kids because apparently I was the world's most sexually active… how the fuck old are you anyway?" He looked from Ken, who appeared to be doing math in his head and failing, to Chikusa, who probably knew how old he was down to the minute.

"I'm thirteen years, 1 month and 23 days old," Chikusa murmured, proving that theory and slanting a glance over at Ken. "We're all thirteen."

Ken shrugged and nodded, "Probably. That sounds right. I don't know. We don't really do the birthday thing."

Lancia sighed, "So, I would have had to have you little bastards when I was ten. Well, that's a completely revolting thought and I'm pretty sure also completely fucking impossible. You're lucky I look the way I do or you'd have had a hell of a time selling anyone on this bullshit. As it is, I guess I look old enough that we can just play it off like I was fifteen or sixteen. Still way too young to be having that much sex, but whatever."

"Huh? Really? How old were _you_ the first time _you_ had sex?"

"Would you like to hear in detail how much that is absolutely none of your fucking business? Seriously, that wouldn't be any of your business even if you were actually mine, Ken."

"Ah, come _on_…"

"Shut up already, all of you, you're giving me a headache," Mukuro hissed, raising his head from where he'd presumably been trying to suffocate himself unsuccessfully for the last four hours. "He's never _had_ sex. Doesn't want to. Isn't interested."

Yup, he definitely hadn't missed Mukuro's tendency to poke around in his head for fun tidbits to toss out when he was feeling spiteful. "Gee, thanks for that, I'm so glad _you_ decided to join the fucking conversation. Stay the fuck out of my head."

Mukuro flipped him off, before returning his face to the pillow. He'd been laying facedown in that pillow for the better part of the last day and a half. They all knew he wasn't sleeping. So Lancia had been operating on the assumption that the little fucker was playing dead which he thought was in pretty poor fucking taste after having just recovered from that scary as shit fever, but his opinion on the matter had already been voiced and met with a coffee mug being thrown in the general direction of his head. He wasn't even really sure where Mukuro had even _gotten_ a coffee mug in the first place.

"You don't… how does that even work?" Ken commented, wrinkling his nose at the thought. Lancia rolled his eyes because that was the only appropriate response to that question.

"Pretty much exactly the way it sounds, actually. It's pretty straight fucking forward, but we ain't talking about me we're talking about your dumbass cover story. So, all right, you're all my kids from two different relationships when I was a teenager. Also, Chikusa and Mukuro have a crazy grandma who wants to kill them. Super. You think can remember that shit, Chikusa?"

"So stupid."

"Oh, like you were any help at all. They'd ask you a question and you'd just ignore them like maybe that would make them less curious. Eventually we were gonna end up with a mob at our door, because they'd think Lancia was keeping us in here as his personal sex monkeys or something."

"Kid, I swear to every fucking god, if I ever hear you use my name in the same sentence as the phrase '_personal sex monkeys_' ever again I'm gonna throw you off this damn boat."

"You'd kill your own son?!"

"Nah, but I'd sure as shit toss your dumbass in the ocean; whether you decide to sink or swim is up to you."

"You've got fucking _problems_, you know that?"

Lancia chuckled, "Who in this room _doesn't_?"

"Why couldn't I just _die_?" Mukuro grumbled, his voice muffled by the pillow, but they all winced nonetheless.

**-ooo-**

"What the hell is this?" Mukuro asked, his voice low and dancing along the edge of anger as he stared at the small, sad, brown paper-wrapped package in his lap as if it were going to bite him or possibly piss in his corn flakes.

"Christmas present. Stop being so dramatic and just fucking open it already. It's just part of our cover, alright?"

"Explain to me how exactly a Christmas present is part of our cover?"

"Because it's Christmas. If I don't get you something I'd be a really awful Dad, wouldn't I? I bartered with some of the passengers and crew and came up with a couple things you little bastards need. Good will was engendered and people have stopped looking at me like I'm gonna steal something or shoot someone, so that's a nice bonus. Stop staring at me like that and just open the fucking thing already. If you hate it you can toss it in the trash as soon as we get to Mumbai. Who gives a shit?"

Mukuro unwrapped the gift slowly, hesitantly. And then preceded to stare at the contents for a ridiculously long time before finally muttering, "I don't understand."

"You're the one who insisted on getting his fucking ears pierced. You left your studs back in New York. If you don't wear something those holes will just close up and heal."

"These… will be useful then, I suppose," Mukuro replied, fingering the small collection of hoops and studs.

"Right. See, look at that, the world continues to spin. I'm gonna go give Chikusa and Ken their shit. Merry fucking Christmas to you too, murder moppet."

**-ooo-**

"But why hair pins?"

"Are you seriously asking that with as often as I have to trim your hair? Your stupid fucking hair grows out like… what'd you say it was, Chikusa?"

"A sixteenth of an inch."

"Right. It grows like a sixteenth of an inch every time you switch cartridges. It's a fucking safety hazard and it's gonna get you killed in a fight one of these days if you don't do something about it. At least those should keep it out of your eyes."

"Aw, you're worried about me."

"No, I'm worried about me. I'm the one who'd end up having to explain to Chikusa and Mukuro about how your hair got you killed, because you were an idiot who doesn't know how to fucking listen. Just use the damn things, all right?"

"Yeah, okay," Ken murmured, smiling a little as he shoved the hairpins in his pocket.

"That one's yours, slim."

"Don't call me that, " Chikusa murmured, his fingers restless against the brown paper and string.

"Just open it already. They don't make bear traps or bombs that small or that soft, so it probably isn't going to kill you or take your hand off."

Chikusa glanced at Ken who waved his hands at him in a 'go ahead' gesture that just made Chikusa's frown deepen. Finally he pulled the string and paper apart to reveal the couple of white beanies he'd bought off a couple guys on the crew. "They're a little lighter weight than the sort you usually wear. It makes me sweat just watching you wear those heavy-ass hats in the summer. These should be a little cooler at least."

Chikusa nodded mutely, his fingers curling against the white cotton, fingering the edges restlessly.

"Thanks, Pop!" Ken called, overly loud as if to remind them both that they were in public. Or least as public as the deck of the ship ever really got as most of the passengers generally stayed below at night since it was cold as shit up on the deck at night. They were the only ones that came up here with any regularity at night and that was mostly for Mukuro's benefit, but there were still plenty crew members around even this late at night.

Ken stepped towards him with a large, completely untrustworthy smile, his arms spread out wide.

"I swear to fuck, kid, if you try to hug me, I will tear your arms off and beat you with them."

Ken wrinkled his nose, "Aw, you're no fun. Though, you know they'd probably grow back, right?"

"They would not," Chikusa commented, leaning back against the railing, the white hats clutched tight in his hands, still half wrapped in the paper.

"Would _so_."

Lancia snorted and leaned against the railing, looking out at the dark waters as Chikusa and Ken bickered about the likelihood of limb regeneration actually working even if he had gecko channel, which he apparently did not.

**-ooo-**

"What the hell is this?" Lancia frowned down at the flannel wrapped lump Chikusa had dropped in his lap.

"Christmas present," Chikusa replied, moving back to stand with Mukuro and Ken.

Lancia snorted, touching a tentative hand to the soft flannel, "Seriously?"

"It was Mukuro's idea," Ken volunteered, grinning.

"So it's a revenge gift. I got you shit you can use and you got me a revenge gift. It's something I'm gonna hate and have to wear anyway, isn't it?"

Chikusa didn't smile, but he could read through that kid's expressions well enough now to tell that it was a close thing.

People were starting to stare so he shrugged and unknotted the flannel to reveal the wide billed leather hat within. Ugly damn thing it was too, a little poufy at the top with a silver band around the brim. He realized after a moment of staring at it that he was laughing. He turned his face into his shoulder to muffle the sound, before turning his gaze up to look at the boys trying to appear nonchalant as they hovered around him. "You bought me an ugly fucking hat."

"Technically, we _bartered_ you an ugly hat," Mukuro corrected, a barely there smirk on his lips. "Good will and all that. The other passengers apparently think we're adorable. You're the one who said the presents were necessary for our cover."

"For you little assholes, not for me."

"Ah, Pops, you don't like it?" Ken commented, grinning and dodging the half-hearted swat Lancia aimed at him.

"We'll be in Mumbai the day after tomorrow, I'm betting you could swim that distance, do you wanna find out if I'm right?"

Ken ducked away to stand behind Chikusa, "You know I don't actually know how to swim, right?"

"_Seriously?_ Wait. Do _any_ of you actually know how to swim?" He looked back and forth between the three of them. Somehow unsurprised when none of the bunch actually answered. "Holy shit, stop using boats as your main form of transportation if you can't swim. Fuck's sake."

"Yes, because driving or flying would be so much safer what with our not being able to drive or fly," Mukuro replied, rolling his eyes.

Lancia shook his head and slid the hat on his head, rather surprised that it actually fit. "Don't be surprised if I decide to trash this thing the second we hit land."

"Whatever you say, Pops."

"Stop calling me '_Pops_', Ken. You may not be able to swim, but I'm pretty sure you'd have time to figure it out if I shoved you into a lifejacket before I dumped you overboard."

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

(TECHNICALLY) VONGOLA  
JAPAN  
2002

**TSUNAYOSHI**

Sawada Tsunayoshi collapsed on his bed, buried his face in his pillow and screamed.

He was thirteen years old and his life just totally sucked. The girl he liked barely knew he existed. He had no friends to speak of. And on days like today, days when he found his test scores were still in single digits even after having spent all week actually studying, he felt like the biggest loser on the planet.

This was not an altogether unusual experience or even an uncommon one. It would probably be easier if he just resigned himself to being a loser and stopped trying to improve his situation. Every time he did and failed, he just felt more stupid than usual and that was really saying something because he always felt like he was kind of an idiot. From his very earliest memories and from all the stories his dad used to tell him about his early childhood, he has always been painfully aware that he isn't, and has never been, the brightest crayon in the box. He also wasn't the most graceful, coordinated, personable, likable or cool crayon in the box either.

It had apparently taken him years to learn how to walk or speak or count or spell. Mom often sighed that he'd done all those things so long after the other kids in the neighborhood that it was no wonder he'd had trouble making friends with them. He must always have been too slow or lame or boring because most of the kids he'd actually spent time with when he was young had always acted like they'd rather watch paint dry then hang out with him. And the rest of the kids in the neighborhood had actively avoided him as if he might be contagious. He didn't really blame them. He often suspected he wasn't very fun to hang out with. He'd always been accident-prone and so his knobby knees and bony legs are still crisscrossed with the scars from childhood tumbles he'd taken into sand boxes, toys, bushes, wasp nests, ant hills, trashcans; basically if he could fall into it or stumble over it, he had. He worried about things maybe a bit too much and that made him reluctant to try new things. And so, really, how much fun could it really be to play with someone like that?

Things had just continued to go from bad to worse once he started school. It hadn't been too awful during the first couple years because very little was expected of him. No one really expected him to have great penmanship or to be able to read really well or excel at math. They didn't even expect him to be good at schoolyard games and that was great, because he was terrible at them. He was pretty much terrible at everything, but no ever really noticed during those first few years. After that though, nothing ever seemed to work out right no matter what he did and he was never, ever good enough.

He failed tests in math, in spelling, history, in Japanese, in English; even his art projects were a mess. He did the work, he studied, he _tried_, but nothing seemed to help. He failed test after test, year after year, passing from one year to the next based exclusively on the actual work he put in (and he imagined in no small part that no teacher wanted him dragging down their test scores year after year). There were just so many, many things he could never seem to fully understand and the things he did understand just seemed to fly right out of his head every time he was presented with something that tested that knowledge. There was a reason he was called Useless Tsuna after all. Some nights he lay in bed with the blankets pulled up over his head and he wondered if maybe there was something really _wrong_ with him.

It wasn't just that he wasn't good at school, though he definitely wasn't. Just that would have been bad enough, but the real problem was that he wasn't good at _anything_. Not one single thing. He was always the last picked for sports days because he couldn't hit or kick a ball to save his life. He had terrible aim and he couldn't catch a cold much less a basketball, but he could dodge pretty well… even if that was mainly because he was afraid of getting hit with the ball. He was a terrible liar so he couldn't even manage to come up with a convincing reason when he tried to fake sick in order to escape the embarrassment of tripping over his own feet running around the track or getting blasted in the face with a volleyball because he hadn't been paying enough attention to what was going on around him.

He'd heard somewhere that everyone was good at something. But he just… _wasn't_. He wasn't good at school or sports or video games or clubs. He'd failed miserably at playing every instrument that was shoved in front of him. He couldn't talk to girls at all and he wasn't even all that great at talking to boys either or making friends at all. Even his own mother thought he was useless, no good at all. She sighed every time she saw one of his poor scores and at some point she'd stopped encouraging him to apply himself and try harder or study more. He'd heard her lamenting his lack of motivation more than once since then, but when it came to telling him off about it… she'd pretty much given up on that. He'd kind of expected that it would be nice not to hear her telling him that if he just tried a little harder that he'd do better all the time, but it really just made him feel worse. Like even she'd given up on him. And he couldn't even really blame her for it. He loved her and she loved him, but he knew he was a disappointment. He lived his life walking a tightrope between hoping if he just tried a little harder he could be better and knowing that trying had never really done him any good at all. Mom loved him, and he was grateful for that, but he knew she'd been hoping for something… for someone… more.

And sometimes when it was very late and he was really determined to really run himself through as many emotional wringers as he could, he'd wonder if maybe that's what his dad had been hoping for too. If maybe that was why Dad never had seemed to be very interested in what he was doing or what he liked. During those rare times when he actually bothered to come home, Dad usually drank and ate and slept and spent a lot of time with Mom.

Every once in a while, usually after he'd had a lot to drink, he'd remember that Tsuna was there and want to talk at him about random things… usually at like half past three in the morning. He'd come pounding on his door with the suggestion that they go fishing or to the amusement park or camping or that Tsuna should come and have a drink with his old man (and it was never, ever anything but sake) or he'd want to tell him how to get girls (that had been when he was seven and he hadn't understood at all what his Dad was even talking about at the time, but when he'd thought back on it years later he'd just wanted to die).

When he was small, he'd always been kind of happy that his Dad wanted to spend time with him regardless of the circumstances, but as he got older… it was just really embarrassing. Really, really embarrassing to have a Dad like Sawada Iemitsu, to have the sort of dad who encouraged his son to drink by telling him it was 'just like water' which he'd only fallen for once when he was nine and he'd been so sick afterwards that he'd sworn never, never, never again. It was the only time he'd ever seen his Mom mad, really mad, at his Dad. She'd found him bent over the toilet and had rubbed his back and asked what happened and he'd told her about Dad's gross water and she'd stood up so quickly he thought she'd hurt something and stormed out of the room. He'd heard her yelling at Dad for like an hour afterwards and then she'd made him sleep outside on the porch. Dad, of course, had been drunk enough that he'd just said '_yes, dear_' a lot and been snoring the second he hit the deck. Tsuna hadn't really cared all that much about what happened because his head hurt and his stomach was still rolling around like it might cause him to throw up a lung next. He was just happy to let his Mom guide him up to bed and tuck him in as if he were a baby again, because he felt awful. When he'd woken up in the morning, Dad had been gone again and it had felt like his fault even if it probably wasn't.

His Dad was just the worst so it was kind of a relief when he left for weeks or months at a time for work. Though the small niggling doubt that it was somehow his fault never really went away and it flared up larger sometimes when Mom yelled at Dad right before he left or when he had brought home particularly bad test scores. On those days, Dad would always look at him like he was something alien, someone he didn't recognize at all and then he'd talk about how cute he was as a baby. Eventually Tsuna would slip away and his Dad would continue to reminisce at the top of his voice as if Tsuna's presence had never been really necessary in that conversation in the first place. And maybe it hadn't been.

Not that he cared about that. Or that his Dad just wasn't there very much or that when he was he just seemed to be terrible at being a dad. Just… his mom had always seemed sad that Dad was away so much. Tsuna hadn't been sad about Dad not being there in a long, long time. Because even when Dad wasn't around, he still had Mom and that was better. Because, even if he wasn't smart or talented or anything remarkable at all, Mom loved him and welcomed him home and that was enough. It was enough just to have somewhere he belonged. It had never really felt like that though when his Dad was home. When Dad was home, he'd always felt like he was intruding on something and so things were better when he was gone.

Sometimes he imagined that he had a real Dad, a different Dad, who had died in some horrible accident shortly after he was born. That way the Dad he saw only once or twice every few weeks or months, the one who ate all the food and monopolized his mother and drank so much and didn't seem to know what to do with a son, was just some guy she liked. It was easier that way, because then it was okay that this guy didn't care if he was there or what he was doing or how he was doing. It was okay that this guy probably didn't love him at all or even like him very much. He didn't have to care about any of that because this guy wasn't really his Dad and he was just there to visit Mom for a while and then he'd be gone again. That was okay, that was better. That was fine and he was fine with it. It's not like he really wanted to spend time with him or anything. It's not like he wanted to be loved by that total loser, deadbeat jerk.

Tsunayoshi didn't really have any friends to speak of and had never had any really good ones at all. So when Dad was home he usually just stayed in his room or wandered out to the park to hang out on the swings and read or just space out until it was time for dinner. Sometimes he came home to find that they'd had dinner without him. Like because he wasn't around in time to remind them, they'd forgotten he even existed. But that was fine too. He was used to it. So he… adjusted.

He'd make himself some rice in the cooker (only burning it or himself occasionally) and drink some milk and listen to the sound of his parents' laughter echoing down the halls. It was easier than complaining. He was already useless, after all, he didn't want to be more of a burden to his mother by whining about the way things were and probably always would be.

So he made himself rice if they forgot about him or heated up leftovers if they remembered and tried to stay out of the way and just wait for Dad to leave again. He never had long to wait. Dad would be gone a few days or a week later, usually without even bothering to saying good-bye to Tsunayoshi at all. Mom would always pass along well wishes and farewells. He'd always thought that she probably just did that to be nice, to make him think that Dad had cared enough to say those kinds of things. Either way was fine really. It wasn't like he needed that. In fact, he kind of preferred things the way they were. After all, the lower his expectations, the less he was disappointed when they were met… or something like that. That was sort of the story of his life after all. Things always got easier once people lowered their expectations to the point where he could no longer disappoint them.

Sometimes Dad was gone for months at a time rather than just weeks and then one day he just hadn't come back at all and Tsunayoshi felt bad for not caring whether or not his dad had bothered to say good-bye. Mom never seemed too sad about it, at least not when he was around to see, and it was easy enough to just not think about Dad at all. Life continued on as it always had when Dad wasn't around. Mom cooked him dinner every night and sometimes he helped a little and they talked about their days and sometimes they watched TV together in the evening and everything was pretty good. Except when he brought home tests and she saw his poor scores and sighed and lamented about the fact that he wasn't trying and wondered aloud whether she should get him a tutor. He usually begged her not to because- though he'd never tell her- he just didn't want yet another person around to be disappointed in him. He was tired of trying. Tired of seeing that look on people's faces. The look that said he wasn't and never would be enough. _Kyouko_ never looked at him like that, at least, but then, of course, in order to look at him like _that_ she'd have to know he existed… which she totally didn't. But she was nice and pretty and he liked watching her, the way she laughed and smiled, always made his day a little less awful. Still, more often than not, he went to bed each night feeling utterly worthless, because even when he sat and studied for hours on end, even when he tried, nothing seemed to stick. He was just what everyone said he was… no good.

After he'd gone to bed on nights like those, he lay in bed with the blankets pulled up over his head and wondered what it was going to be like when he grew up. If he was really just bad at everything, just really a total loser at life, what did he really have to look forward to? You couldn't even work in fast food if you couldn't count change correctly. He wasn't that bad, probably, but still… he knew he wasn't that good either. He managed to squeak by from year to year, moving up from grade school to junior high and everything, but that owed mainly to the fact that he did his homework. Of course, he also had a sneaky feeling that some of his teachers were passing him just to get him out of their class. Just to keep him from being their problem for two years in a row. No one enjoyed having the stupidest kid in their class after all. The only reasons he bothered going to school at all these days were to see Kyouko and because if he didn't show up often enough it would mean trouble for Mom.

More often than not, he fell asleep wishing that he'd wake up in the morning and he'd find out that he had a purpose. That there was some reason he was like this. That secretly he was awesome in some totally unexpected way and his brain's way of coping with that was by making him completely terrible at everything else to balance it out. He didn't need to be special or anything, he just wanted to be… normal. Just wanted to be good enough and if he were talented at something, anything at all, than maybe things would be okay. He just wished there was something that he could do that might make his mother a little bit proud of him. Or at least not so embarrassed by the fact he was her son. That might make Kyouko look at him and smile.

When he woke up the morning of May 17th, there was nothing about the sun shining in the sky or about his bento box or about the day itself that indicated that it would be any different than any of those that had come before.

After all, there was no way for him to know that he'd been selected to be the next boss of the Vongola Famiglia and even if there had been, it wouldn't have meant anything to him then. He had no way of knowing that while he had been oversleeping a tutor had come by the house. That he had slipped a notice into the family post box for his mother to find, offering his services- free of charge- in exchange for room and board. That he was an extraordinary tutor who had come to Japan all the way from Italy specifically to whip Sawada Tsunayoshi into shape. That this tutor would insult him and shoot him with weird bullets and fill his boring everyday life with chaos, but would also be the very first person who would ever truly believe in him.

So, he came home early from school, despondent that he'd scored low on another test and that Kyouko seemed to be interested in that guy from the kendo club. Not that he'd expected anything else, but not expecting more didn't make the reality suck any less. As he collapsed onto his bed and screamed into his pillow and reflected on the fact that he was just a total loser- and all the things about his life that led him to that inevitable and unavoidable conclusion- he still had no idea how much his life was about to change.

Eventually- feeling once more resigned to his fate- he picked his head up out of the pillow, got up and began rummaging through his room for something to read to take his mind off things. He thought about cleaning up a little bit when he tripped over a pile of old school books and banged his shin against the desk, but it didn't seem worth it. He'd just mess it up again anyway.

He didn't know it then, but in less than an hour his Mom would come home from the store and get a call from the school about him leaving early again. She'd come up to his room and talk to him about how much she didn't want him to be bored and how much she wanted him to live a happy life. Then, of course, she'd tell him that she'd finally followed through on her threats and hired him a tutor from some shady flyer she'd found. And he'd complain and panic a little because he really, really didn't want that. Then he'd go downstairs and meet Reborn and his life would be many, many things from that point on, but boring would never be one of them.

On that day, Sawada Tsunayoshi would begin learning three of the most important lessons of his life.

The first was that when you had somewhere you belonged, somewhere to come home to and people you loved, that there was nothing you wouldn't do to protect that.

The second was that Reborn, baby or no, was scary as hell and would probably kill him for real some day.

The third was that if you were going to ask the universe for something, it paid to be very, very, very specific.

Just in case.

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

THE GANG  
MUMBAI  
2002

**CHIKUSA**

India was almost unbearably hot. Even with the air on, even in the relative darkness of their bedroom late in the night, Mumbai was almost too warm. It was a dry sort of heat, like being baked in an oven, the sort of heat that was almost worse when you were inside. At least in Italy and New York the heat had been better if you were inside or in the shade, here the heat was inescapable, unavoidable, and he constantly felt like the too warm air was burning him up from the inside out.

"You know, you could take off the hat and, you know, some of your fifteen layers of clothes if you're too hot," Ken grumbled, flopping around on his side of the bed like a fish out of water. Chikusa didn't have to see him to know that Ken had stripped down to his boxers again. Since they'd arrived in India, Ken spent pretty much every moment he could wearing as little as possible while still wearing something that still at least _technically_ counted as pants. That was Mukuro's rule. One that Lancia and Chikusa had wholeheartedly agreed with and Ken had reluctantly, grudgingly conceded to obey.

The heat agreed with Ken in a way it didn't agree with the rest of them, made him increasingly comfortable in his own skin. Skin that baked to a warm golden brown that made Ken's teeth all the whiter whenever he smiled, which was often. His own skin just turned pink and red and peeled when he was out too long in the sun, so he tried to avoid that whenever possible. He wasn't sure what Mukuro's skin did in the sun, in order to know that Mukuro would actually have to leave the apartment and he hadn't done that in months.

He thought about asking how Ken knew he was hot, but knowing Ken he could probably smell the scent of sweat dripping down his back, soaking into his hat. Plus, even if he couldn't, it was a reasonable guess. He was almost always too hot though he didn't think that really had anything to do with what he was wearing. He was pretty sure he'd be far too warm either way. He often wondered why Ken continuously chose to share a room, to share a bed, with him despite his eccentricities. He wondered if it were a case of old habits dying hard or if Ken took the same comfort from it that he did.

Sometimes he wanted to ask, thought about asking, but more often it felt like some silent agreement between them. That if he lent his voice to it, to the question of why, whatever fragile bond kept them close like this would break and he'd be left alone in the aftermath. Maybe one day he would be strong enough to handle that, to handle sleeping alone without the sound of Ken's snoring in his ears, drowning out all the ambient noise whether they were in prison or the city or even just camping outside with Mukuro and Lancia sleeping nearby. But he was pretty sure that whether he was strong enough or not, it would never be a change he would seek out for himself.

He felt Ken sigh heavily and sit up, the shift of the weight distribution on the bed that meant Ken was leaning over him. Then Ken's palm was sliding across his cheek, slow and steady as if to avoid startling him. His fingers slid up across his forehead, fingertips pausing at the edge of the soft white cap Lancia had given him on the ship. Not the first gift he'd ever been given, certainly, but the first one that had been presented formally like that since he'd been a very small child in his parents' house during a time he could barely remember now. Most of the hats he'd worn over these last few years had been gifts given after a fashion, but they'd never been packaged as such.

Ken's fingers against the edge of this hat were like a question. Lingering there so that he had time to consider, time to refuse, to pull away, and he tensed up a little as he thought of doing that. As he thought about keeping the hat despite the heat, despite the fact that it was just he and Ken in this dark, quiet room and Ken knew all his marks and scars by heart.

The hat made him feel safe, they always had, but it also served as a reminder and that was the main reason he wore it regardless of the day or the season. It was a reminder that someone cared enough about his comfort to help him hide the things about himself he wanted to keep secret, keep safe. He turned onto his back so he could look up at Ken propped up on his arms above him, warm and close, his hair messy and still a little damp from sticking his head in the sink before bed. He never bothered to comb his hair, just ran his fingers through it, had Lancia cut it when it got too long. He used the pins Lancia had given him to hold it out of his face during the day, but he always left it wild and loose at night, the pins tucked in a glass on the dresser for safekeeping.

Ken still refused to shower, preferring to clean up in the sink with towels or use the bath when there was a bathtub. It was one of the things, the many things, that had made prison… challenging. Ken had never showered with them, it had always been Mukuro who would slide in almost unnoticed and walk with them to the shower room and stick around until Ken's hair had dried and they were back in their cell and leave taking the memory of each shower with him. He never commented on it and he did a decent enough impression of Ken that Chikusa was pretty sure Lancia had never noticed. Chikusa himself only noticed because he'd been watching Ken and Mukuro for years, he knew every fiber of them. In the end, it was just another unspoken confidence between them.

Ken's eyes always seemed to glow a little in the dark, he knew they didn't, they'd been in much darker rooms than this and they hadn't glowed then, but in barely lit rooms, they always seemed to shine. There was just enough light coming through beneath the window sash that he could see that the pupils were huge, blown-out, only the faintest rim of color visible around the edge. He couldn't see the color in the dark, but he'd spent enough time staring into those eyes that his brain could fill in the exact shade of honey brown for him nonetheless.

Over the years he'd become better at controlling what they'd done to his own eyes even without the glasses to help filter out all the information. Most of the time he just shut it out, shut it down, tried to ignore all the excess information when it wasn't needed, wasn't necessary. But he always left it on just a bit when he was with Ken, just Ken, because he liked… liked looking at him and seeing him with that startling clarity. Knowing the exact angle of the tilt his head when questioning, the minute twitch of muscles and tendons that indicated which way he was going to move, the force of his breath as it disrupted the air between them. Facts and figures that filled his head, filed away for future reference so that he could remember and recall every last minor detail if he needed to, wanted to, as if those tiny details might be significant. And they were significant, to him even if to no one else.

"Okay," Chikusa whispered and Ken's fingers slid beneath the hat, pulling it free, fingernails scrapping lightly over his scalp. The cap slid free, slipping back soundlessly onto the pillow as Ken combed fingers back through his hair again and again, loosening the damp strands, his fingertips finding and tracing over the scars beneath. Another old habit, this one a holdover from prison where there'd been no hat to hide beneath, but there had been the feel of Ken's rough fingers sliding over those scars again and again. As if touching them calmed him, comforted him, even though that probably wasn't true. It felt like it could be and it had helped give the vulnerability purpose even if it was only in his imagination.

"See, it's better like this, right?" Ken whispered and Chikusa wasn't really sure why they were whispering only that they were. Wasn't even really sure what they were talking about.

"It's better," he replied and he was very conscious of how little Ken was wearing, how close he was, of the warmth of his breath against his cheek and he knew Ken could hear the way his heart beat sped up. He closed his eyes as Ken's fingers trailed down his cheek over the tattoo there, chasing the marks Esterneo had left on them as he always did, as if he could wipe them away by touch, repetition and force of will.

It hadn't always been like this, he hadn't always been so… aware. Ken had always been important, necessary, vital, and he'd always wanted him close, but it hadn't made him so… nervous before. He wasn't sure what had changed, when it had changed, only that it had and that it felt new and different and it made him uneasy. He wondered sometimes if it was different for Ken too, thought about asking, but he was afraid of this answer too. Afraid of what it might change and what he might lose in the asking.

Ken's fingers stilled against the tiny scar on his chin, a memento of their first real fight with the Volpe Famiglia. Ken's warm breath ghosted against his cheek and he swallowed hard because that lingering touch was…

Gone. Before he could even finish the thought, Ken was rolling over, flopping back onto the bed beside him with a loud, overdramatic yawn taking Chikusa's hat with him. "See, that wasn't so bad," he said, his voice suddenly too loud in their dark room. "Maybe you could try taking off that coat next."

"Shut up. It's just a shirt." Chikusa replied, because whatever that moment had been, it was gone and arguing with Ken was easy and familiar and comforting. An easy habit made of years of practice.

"Are you kidding? It's made of like fucking burlap or something. Nothing that thick gets to be called a shirt."

"Go to sleep," Chikusa mumbled, rolling back onto his side and away, a smile tugging at his lips. Maybe he was just imagining that things were changing, maybe they were just the same as they'd always been. And maybe that was okay. He'd never been a huge fan of change, after all.

**-ooo-**

**KEN**

What the fuck was _wrong_ with him?

What the _fuck_? What the fuck had he been thinking?

But he hadn't been thinking, _of course_ he hadn't been thinking. That was the problem. He never thought he just flew around by the seat of his fucking pants and let instinct lead him and this was what that dumbass shit got him. He clutched Chikusa's cap in his hand, careful to keep his nails clear of the fabric, and closed his eyes, breathing hard and fast like he'd just been in a fight or run a mile. Trying to at least keep it quiet, quiet enough so Chikusa wouldn't notice over the gentle whoosh of the fan.

He'd almost…. He'd been touching that scar on his chin, that one he'd gotten when they'd been fighting the Volpe and some asshole had tagged him with a knife. He hadn't been thinking about anything in particular, he'd just been touching that scar because he liked touching Chikusa, always had, and then he'd wanted… he'd wanted to just….

Just lean down and press their lips together like it was the most normal, natural fucking thing in the whole damn world.

What the hell was _wrong _with him?

He was so _stupid_. So, so, so stupid.

"Yeah, sleep. Sleep would probably be good. It's… um… yeah… good night." He managed, his fingers shaking with the rush of panic that was turning his stomach in knots.

He set Chikusa's hat on the nightstand, careful to keep his grip from tightening too much, to keep his nails from accidentally ripping the delicate fabric. He had to be careful. He always had to be careful. Because if he wasn't careful, if he didn't take the time to think things through, he was gonna ruin _everything._

"…. Night."

He was such a total fucking _idiot_.

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

UNAFFILIATED  
FRANCE  
2002

**FRAN**

He was still sleeping when they left him by the side of the road, wrapped in a blanket and tucked into a plastic tub. If they'd cared, they might even have even left a sign that read: "Free to a good home." But then if they had cared they probably wouldn't have left their son drugged up to the gills on cough syrup in a box on the side of the road in the middle of France to begin with.

Of course, maybe they weren't _really _to blame….

After all, he wasn't _actually_ their son.

They actually didn't really have any _idea_ who the heck he was at all.

They didn't even know if Fran was his real name or just something he'd made up because they'd come from France and that was the first thing that popped into his head.

All they really knew was that he was just a cuckoo's child left in among their older children like maybe they wouldn't notice that they had an extra. And, in all fairness, they hadn't. He'd been with them for a month while they'd been on vacation in Italy before heading back home to France. He might have stayed with them longer still, but he hadn't come down with a cold the day before and his well-meaning foster mother hadn't given him just a little too much cough syrup. That wasn't really her fault, of course, he hadn't been super specific about making sure she knew his age or weight when he'd moved in with them, after all. Mainly because he didn't really know his age or weight either and it never really occurred to him that those things might be important.

He was out cold within the hour and as soon as he was really and truly unconscious, the illusion that made him seem like he was theirs broke and they suddenly found themselves with a child they didn't want or know and a bunch of memories that suddenly seemed like confusing vague and distant dreams. Whoever this child was, he definitely wasn't theirs. This strange boy with his sea-green hair and those strange, sharp, black markings around his eyes wasn't like any child they'd ever seen.

They weren't sure exactly why they hadn't seen it before, why they hadn't understood that his straight-forward almost rude nature wasn't something he could have learned from them, that he looked nothing like them at all even putting aside the strange hair and eyes. That while he followed them from place to place easily enough, he hadn't ever seemed very interested in anything they were doing or seeing at all. He'd never hugged them and they'd never felt the urge to touch him beyond what was absolutely necessary. They hadn't even kissed him goodnight or tucked him in as they did their other children. More often than not, they'd just let him stay up late reading with a flashlight and not made a single comment about it though they'd reprimanded their eldest child for doing the same thing.

They weren't particularly superstitious people and while they were practicing Catholics, they had still never considered themselves particularly devote in that either. Though maybe that was the problem. Maybe if they'd attended church more regularly they'd have figured out sooner that there was a monster in their midst. Because, honestly, what other explanation could there be? One day they'd had two children and the next they'd had three and they'd gone a whole month and never realized it was strange at all. That wasn't something a normal person could do. No, that was the stuff of legends and old wives' tales and it was chilling to think of what he… it… might be capable of doing. Because if it could make them believe it was their child, well… there was probably no end to what it might do. They probably should have killed it or dropped it off at a church or with the police but, honestly, they were too afraid of the implications. No one looks kindly on someone who brings in a drugged kid in a box no matter what color his hair is or how wild the story they tell about how he ended up in the box in the first place. No, that was the sort of thing that got people locked in padded rooms if they were lucky or jail cells if they weren't.

The green-haired boy who had snuck into their lives was probably a monster but, even still, it was a child or at least it looked like one. So they did what they could to appease it by tucking some money, food and water in the box with it along with a nice warm blanket and leaving it where it might be easily found. It could be someone else's problem or perhaps it would just go back to wherever it came from in the first place. They really couldn't take the chance that it'd wake up and cast another spell on them, after all, but that didn't mean they wanted to become monsters themselves by hurting it or leaving it to die.

After all, it might not die. It might be tougher than it looked and just wake up and kill them all. Better just to leave it be and get as far away from it as possible. They just wanted it gone, that was all. Just wanted to go home and turn their thoughts to forgetting this ever happened in the first place. Letting it become the kind of story their children told ten years from now and they'd be able to look at them in the manner that clearly said 'oh, you crazy kids'. Look at them and say, "No, of course that didn't happen, you must have dreamed it."

And maybe if they said that enough times they'd believe it themselves and they'd never have to really think about that green-haired thing again.

Fran woke in the morning, too warm in the light of the early morning late summer sun, with a little bit of a sore throat. He was a little stiff and hopelessly tangled in his blanket. He struggled out of it an inch at a time until he found himself sitting in his pajamas a little flustered as one didn't usually go to sleep and expect to wake up in something that was so red or smelled so rubbery. He sat up, yawning and rubbing his bleary eyes tiredly. Well… he was pretty sure he hadn't gone to sleep in a box on the side of the road.

Oh well.

Alone.

Again.

Fran was nothing if not quick to adapt to changing circumstances. For as long as he could remember, this was what his life had been like, so he'd learned to take it in stride. Blowing shaggy green hair out of his face, he pulled himself up, out of the box and looked around to see where he was this time. It was just a road, and a pretty major one judging by the condition of the gravel. He'd been on his own long enough and left on the side of roads often enough in his short life to spot the differences. The major roads were always patched and filled, always had a bit more trash on the sides too. Someone would be along pretty soon probably.

Of course… he was going to have to work on his clothes a little, because it was probably weird that he was wearing pajamas. He glanced down at his bare feet, a little bummed out that his shoes were gone. They'd probably been left behind where he'd set them by the door last night and that was too bad. He'd really liked those shoes. They'd just been sneakers, red and white with purple laces, but they'd fit nicely which most of his shoes didn't. He closed his eyes and concentrated and he could feel them. The soft cotton socks he'd worn with them and the way they'd hugged his toes and pinched only a little and came up to his ankles where they cut in just a bit if he tied them too tightly, which he usually did because he liked to really know they were there. He opened his eyes and the shoes were there on his feet where they belonged even if they were only as real as he believed them to be. They'd be good enough until he reached somewhere new at least.

He turned back to the box to see what else those stingy shoe-thieves had left him. "Ah, hey! Sandwich, I've got a sandwich," Fran commented, sorting through the contents of the box and pulled out a limp sandwich in a foggy bag, the bottle of water and the apple they'd tucked into the box with him. There was money too, but he didn't really care much about money. He couldn't eat money so he'd worry about that later. He rarely bothered to buy things when he could just as easily take what he needed. He flopped down on the grass beside the road to eat.

It wasn't a terrible sandwich. Not great, but not terrible either. It had probably been better before it had spent so much time getting warm and a little squished in the box with him. It was a pretty warm morning, after all. Of course, that giant woman and her giant hands had never been very good in the kitchen. He was never worried that he'd die from her terrible cooking, but it wasn't worth getting excited about either. Next time maybe he'd find someone who made a really great sandwich. Maybe he was done with families. Families were a pain. Too many people, too many illusions and he'd had to squish in-between them in the car while they traveled and the boy had always smelled like mayonnaise and the girl had had sharp elbows that she'd rammed into his side constantly because she was always forgetting he was there. So, maybe he'd find some old man or lady who lived alone next time. That would probably be easier and there would probably be less traveling involved. He wouldn't mind just staying in one place for a while.

Fran ate the sandwich up in big bites and thought about what direction he should take. When you were on a road in the middle of nowhere was it better to go left? Or right?

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

CEDEF  
ITALY  
2002

**IEMITSU**

Iemitsu had never thought of himself as a family man. Still didn't really. He considered himself a romantic though as many of the most important decisions of his life had been made for the sake of or in the service of love. When he'd been young, he'd gone to war for the sake of beautiful and merciless Angelina. Fortunately for them both, that war had been a war of children and fought on the expected battlegrounds of playgrounds and schoolyards. She's ended up leaving him for a boy named Jimmy who kissed her behind the classroom building and held her hand during recess. Iemitsu had been heartbroken… right up until he met Regina when she transferred into their class two days later.

During his high school years there had been a string of girls whose names he could no longer remember. They'd been from allied families mostly, occasionally from rival families but those romances always flared brightly and fizzled out just as quickly. The lure of the forbidden had never been enough to hold his interest for long. High school came and went, most of university too, and he devoted himself to the family business. As he'd never gotten along with most of the punks in the Italian branch, he'd gone ahead and slipped pretty seamlessly in CEDEF. It suited him better than the traditional enforcement and bodyguard positions that were most popular within the family proper. He'd never been particularly interested in being an assassin either, though he was certainly strong enough to show those punks in the Varia a thing or two, but he and Tyr had never seen eye to eye and he didn't like Xanxus or Ottabio at all so it was just easier to join CEDEF. Plus, spy work suited him, it was dangerous, but it was also romantic in a way wet work and guard duty never would be. He moved through the ranks quickly enough even while he was still attending Namimori University. Then, in his third year of university schooling, he met Nana in his modern folklore course. Beautiful, perfect, sublime, wonderful, fantastic Nana.

In no time at all, Nana had become his guiding star, his true North, the great and only love of his life. They'd graduated together and moved into a little house in a nice area of Namimori and they'd started a life together. They were married a few months later and everything was perfect. Until she told him she wanted to start a family. Of course, she might have mentioned it once or twice before while they were in school and afterwards, the desire to have children, but maybe he'd been thinking a little bit more about her perfect breasts and the way she felt pressed against him and not enough about that other stuff. So, maybe he'd never thought of himself as a father, but that didn't mean he hated the idea. And, most importantly, it was what Nana wanted and who was he to deny anything to the woman he loved more than life itself?

When she'd called him to tell him she was pregnant while he was away on a job for CEDEF he had been overjoyed, because she had been thrilled. She had just sounded so excited, had started talking about painting the upstairs spare room yellow and what kind of crib she'd like to get and her excitement had been infectious. She'd talked about teddy bears and mobiles and changing tables and he'd been happy to take her shopping when he got home. To help her put together all the furniture and paint the nursery and talk to her belly for hours while she giggled and how he loved the way those giggles turned to moans when he turned his attention to more interesting places. They'd been happy, he'd been happy, and Nana was as beautiful pregnant as she had ever been and she didn't even mind when he needed to leave to go to work for a few weeks here and there.

He'd dreamed of having a daughter during those months. A beautiful, wonderful girl with Nana's looks and his smile and that she would be absolutely perfect. And he would have two Nanas to cherish and it would be glorious. He imagined them together often, Nana dressed in that white sundress with the little straps cradling their beautiful baby girl in her arms, snuggling her and taking her for walks and playing with her and… uh… whatever else it was you did with babies. Then she'd grow up and he'd give her away on her wedding day to a nice boy who wasn't at all affiliated with the mafia and she'd have children of her own and he and Nana would retire to somewhere warm and sunny and they'd spend their twilight years on white sand beaches and he'd get to wake up to her beautiful face every day.

What he'd gotten was the boy.

He wasn't really sure what to do with the boy.

The boy was just always just… there. There and loud, cute, but loud and really kind of smelly. Monopolizing Nana's time and attention and for years it was almost a relief whenever he'd have to leave on long missions or when his presence was required at headquarters to deal with something or other. At least then he could fantasize about a life with Nana that didn't also consist of the small, screaming, smelly red-faced boy.

It was easier when the boy got older. He saw so little of them during Tsuna's early years that what he had of the boy had been less memories and more distinct impressions like snapshots in his mind in which the boy was a little bigger, a little taller or his hair a little poofier. The kid truly just had the most ridiculous hair and Nana liked it, of course, thought it was adorable, and refused to cut it. Over the several years, it had seemed like the boy had started avoiding him when he was home which he kind of liked because he meant he got more quality time with Nana. But he also didn't particularly like at _all_ because it meant that the boy might not like _him_ and he'd never liked being disliked.

So he'd started going out of his way to share things with the boy. Gave him his first drink in the Grand Sawada Tradition (or what he was now going to call the Grand Sawada Tradition as his parents had died in a car crash when he was young, and so he'd always been a bit short on Sawada traditions). He was pretty sure that hadn't actually gone that well because he'd woken up on the porch the next morning and Nana had scowled at him and the boy had seemed to be avoiding him even more than usual. He tried to bond with the kid every time he was home, told him stories that Nana had told him about when he was a baby. Tried to give him advice about girls and making friends (for all the good he thought it would actually do).

He tried just about every damn thing he could think of. Tried taking him fishing (where he always fell in the lake at least twice and managed to get a hook stuck in himself somewhere every damn time), took him camping (bitten by a squirrel, fell down a hill, set his pants on fire), took him to Kokuyo Land (threw up on two different rides, fell off the carousal, choked on popcorn, got his fingers stuck in a safety gate)… but the kid never seemed to enjoy much of any of it. He was just… plain awful at _everything_.

Eventually he stopped trying to take him places and instead just tried talking to him every time he came home, but the kid just continued to avoid him and when he did manage to corner him into a conversation, the boy would just laugh uneasily and answer his questions with short, abrupt responses and red-faced embarrassment. So, in the end he'd given it up as a bad job and figured it was probably just easier to stay away for a while. It wasn't as if he didn't have plenty to do, of course, he was a busy man and there was the mystery of Esterneo to investigate as well as this boogeyman Mukuro Rokudou bullshit which was interesting if probably mostly just a lot of superstitious old white men clutching their pearls for no damn good reason. Plenty of stuff to do that didn't involve trying to bond with a kid who clearly wasn't interested.

Maybe they'd have more in common when the kid got older.

_Maybe._

Sometimes he'd dream that the mafia would come and take the boy away to serve as the next boss. He was a cute kid, clumsy and bad at making friends, but… cute. He was pretty sure that cute didn't count for much in the mafia, but you never knew. Vongola had always been kind of strange as Famiglia went. Either way, he could resume his happy days with Nana as if the boy had been nothing but an inconvenient dream and everything would be wonderful. The boy would instead become a man who worked alongside him, one he could take out for drinks and they'd have things to talk about and experiences in common. They could even, maybe, be something like friends. Everything would be perfect.

And that was why he'd originally suggested his cute, clumsy son for consideration one night over drinks with Nono. After all, he was descended from the first boss just like Iemitsu himself, there was probably some talent hiding in that kid somewhere. No reason at all why he shouldn't be considered, really. With the proper training, they might even be able to make a half-decent boss out of him. And, really, anybody was better than fucking _Xanxus_.

Of course, he'd never thought they'd actually pick him.

"Have you met him?" Iemitsu replied, making a sour face at the phone.

"Of course I've met him. I met him several times when he was young, you were there for most of those meetings as I recall. Your son is a cute kid."

"He was a cute kid. He's a teenager now, an awkward one. Nana sent me a picture. He's skinny and dorky and he probably still doesn't have any friends or a girl. What about him makes you think he's the least bit qualified to serve as Vongola Decimo?"

"There's no one else within the family who is suited for the position. He is my choice, Iemitsu. What are you complaining about anyway? You're the one who suggested the boy after my youngest passed."

"Well, sure, I just… never thought you'd actually pick him. I mean, come on, he's what? Thirteen? Fourteen now? That's late to begin training even if you were just looking to make him an enforcer or a bodyguard or something. Who'd you send to train him?"

"Reborn's already been with him in Japan for a few months. He has high hopes for him. I do believe the words 'boundless potential' were used."

"Boundless potential, huh? That seems overly optimistic. Reborn… That's right, I'd forgotten he'd taken to the idea of being a tutor. That Reborn… he'd better not get my Nana involved in all this!"

Nono sighed loudly, the beleaguered sound of someone who has had far too many similar conversations. He didn't particularly enjoy the fact that Nono was using that sigh while talking to him. "Reborn has been made aware of the situation with Nana. I don't believe he approves, but he won't interfere."

"Good! Because it isn't any of his business!" Iemitsu grumbled, already irritated at the idea of another man living in Nana's house, even if it was Reborn.

"Yes, yes. So, I assume you called for a reason?"

"Oh, yeah! I need to see some security footage from Traditore. Would you mind making a call?"

"Which security footage would that be?"

"Everything they have on Mukuro Rokudou and everyone he came in with."

"You do realize that they've booked fifteen different people in as Mukuro Rokudou over the last few years? It's becoming as popular as Mario Rossi."

"Yup! But only one of them has every escaped and it's his footage I want."

"Alright, I'll make a call. Is this about your Esterneo theory?"

"Kind of yes, kind of no. It's early days yet, but I'll tell you when I have something concrete. Do you want to hear about the suicides?"

"Suicides?"

"Right! Back in December there was a sudden rash of deaths that were ruled as suicides. Sixty-nine of those deaths occurred at approximately the same time. I mean like down to the minute. Twenty-seven of those people visited the post office and mailed letters or big manila envelopes before they died. Then each and every one of those twenty-seven people walked or jumped in front of trains at approximately the same time in forty-three different cities from Beijing to Rome to Los Angeles. The remaining forty-two all but one were associated with the mafia in some way, some were accountants, most were mid-level enforcers, about ten were bodyguards and this was scattered across like thirty different Famiglia. The last one was actually the head of the Tartaruga Famiglia out of Milan. Before he killed himself he successfully had hits executed on every major player in his region, including those within his own Famiglia."

"Yes, I remember hearing about that last incident. The suicides I did not know about, but even though we don't do extensive business in Milan, we were not unaffected by the chaos that incident caused."

"Exactly! That's exactly what I'm saying. Milan will be in chaos for_ years _because of that one incident and it hurt _everyone's _bottom line from the biggest to the smallest Famiglia and it destroyed Tartaruga. It was a move that literally no one in the whole of the mafia could profit from and that's what makes it interesting."

"I don't know that interesting is truly the word I would use for it. Sometimes when we speak I wonder if you truly understand the meaning of certain words and phrases like 'interesting' and 'manageable' and 'it was just a little fire'."

"Eh, you're no fun, Nono. I'm talking about the boogeyman. The _boogeyman_! What isn't interesting about that?"

Nono scoffed, "No, you're like a child tracking rumor and conjecture. You're chasing ghosts, Iemitsu."

"You're gonna feel awfully silly when I prove he's not only real, but just a man, you know."

"Yes, well, if that happens I'll be sure to buy you a drink to apologize."

"_When_ that happens, you'll buy me _two_ drinks. One to apologize for doubting me and one to celebrate and I'm holding you to that."

Nono chuckled, "Please do."

**-ooo-**

**THEN**

THE GANG  
MUMBAI  
2002

**LANCIA**

"I need you to make it _stop_." Mukuro's voice cut through the darkness like a knife.

"You know, kid, waking up with you looming over me has featured in some of my more prominent nightmares." Lancia grumbled, voice still thick with sleep and no small amount of irritation.

He opened his eyes and sure enough, Mukuro was standing beside his bed, looming over him like some sort of demented bird of prey. "It has not," he hissed, "but I'll see that it does _now_."

"Wow, _you're _awfully fucking touchy for someone who woke _me_ up at the ass-crack of dawn."

He glared down at him with eyes almost lost in the dark baggage he was carrying beneath them, "I need you to talk to him."

Lancia groaned, tempted to cover his head with the pillow and pretend he'd fallen back asleep. It wouldn't work, of course, but damned if he wasn't sick and tired of this bullshit. Mukuro had been weird ever since he'd woken up on the ship after his fever had finally broken.

Eight _fucking _months ago.

He was seriously beginning to wonder if that fever hadn't baked his homicidal brain extra crazy or if it was just puberty finally rearing its ugly head in the most irritating way possible.

In the end, he propped himself up on his elbows and sighed heavily, "Look, you're gonna have to give me a little more to work with than that if you wanna get something done, kid."

"Ken… he… I am _not_ talking to him about the dreams he's been having." Mukuro grumbled, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. He looked down and away and even though it was plenty dark in the room he was absolutely sure Mukuro's face was tomato red. He could practically feel the embarrassment radiating off him like heat.

"Ah," Lancia managed, trying and failing miserably to hold back a chuckle. He got a spike of pain in his head for his trouble, but it was kind of worth it. "I don't know what to tell ya, kid. You boys are at about the right age for it. Puberty's a real bitch, huh?"

"Shut. _Up_," Mukuro snapped, looking every inch an awkward teenager as he uncrossed and re-crossed his arms defensively, nervously. It was so damn easy to forget when he was awake and killing people left, right and center that Mukuro was still just thirteen (or maybe fourteen, could be either really, he'd been thirteen in December, but he had no damn idea when the kid's birthday was). "I just… it's really… I can't… it's…."

"Well, you see, boys of a certain age, their bodies start to change and..."

"I told you to shut _up_. I know all of that. I've sat through dozens of classes on biology and anatomy and health science and sexual education and I don't even _know _what else, I understand all about the _why _of it. I don't _care _about the why. I really, truly do not _care_ about anything except that you make it stop. I _need _it to _stop._"

"You know if you stuck to your own dreams instead of wandering into everybody else's this probably wouldn't be an issue for you." Lancia replied, enjoying seeing Mukuro this off balance. Very little flustered the kid typically, but Lancia was slowly beginning to realize that Mukuro's sensibilities were as unbalanced as the rest of him. Some days he'd have no problem telling Ken exactly what to do about it and he'd have no problem articulating why he had a problem at length. Other days he just wouldn't have a problem with it at all, simply wouldn't care, and some days- like today apparently- he'd rather die then deal with it at all. Mukuro was only consistent in his inconsistency.

"Don't you think I would if I could?" Mukuro snapped, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "It isn't… I'm still… healing; I suppose that's a decent enough word for it. I don't have full control over some talents back just yet."

Lancia snorted, "Ah, well, that answers that. Okay, I'll see what I can do. And at least now I understand why it feels like I'm doing an extra load of fucking laundry every week." He smiled at the unintentional joke, "Heh, fucking laundry."

"_Please shut up,_" Mukuro grouched with the look that was probably common in all teenagers everywhere that clearly said he thought Lancia was too embarrassing to live and he wished he'd die and put them both out of their misery.

Of course, with most teenagers, that look probably didn't feel quite so much like a threat.

**-ooo-**

Lancia wasn't quite sure what hell was actually like, but he was pretty sure July in Mumbai was close. There was something just fundamentally fucking wrong with a place that could be scorching hot one minute and then pouring down rain on your head in the next. Some days were nice, but most days were miserable. He'd hated Mumbai since the moment they'd stepped off the boat and not just because the food disagreed with him, though that didn't help, or because he didn't understand what anyone was saying half the time. India wasn't like America, Mukuro hadn't been up for doing whatever weird ass head trick he did to help them learn English as fast as they had. So Hindi remained mostly a mystery though he was pretty sure he'd at least figured out for to say '_four, please_', '_thank you_' and '_fuck off_' which were generally the only things he really needed since they still had plenty of Mukuro's no doubt ill-gotten wealth left to pay for shit so none of them had bothered to pick up jobs.

Far as he could tell, they were here to allow the kids time to get back to normal after New York and the minor breakdowns they'd all had on the boat afterwards. And it had taken awhile. There had been months where the standard was that all three of them woke each other up screaming at fuck-off o'clock in the morning several times a night and he'd been stuck trying to explain to the neighbors and then the police in a combination of English and increasingly frantic hand gestures that the kids had terrible night terrors and, no, he wasn't beating the hell out of them nightly. He was really glad when Mukuro finally got his shit together enough that he'd been able to use illusions to soundproof the place a few months back.

So, the first four months or so in India had been long and rough, but things had evened out in April and they'd finally settled back into something like the easy rhythm they'd developed in New York. Mukuro was still kind of off, keeping to himself more than he ever had before and staying locked up in his room for hours at a time, some days only emerging to push food around a plate for a while before disappearing again. Ken and Chikusa accepted this new state of affairs easily enough though they still slid into place beside him whenever he allowed it. Whenever he saw the three of them together, the rare times when they actually spent time together these days rather than merely occupied the same space, it made him weirdly, inexplicably sad.

"Hey, hey, hey. I need these. Can I have these? I need these." Ken commented, bouncing on his heels and gesturing to a pair of delicate curling red hair clips. Lancia snorted and picked them up. Gesturing to the man running the stall and offering him a few crumbled bills. Bartering at the bazaars, he was finding, was helped immensely by being the biggest, scariest looking foreigner in the joint. The man merely nodded, took the money offered and waved him off as if eager to have him gone. He probably was, probably thought Lancia's scowl would scare away other customers. He'd picked up on enough Hindi to know that sentiment was a common one in the bazaars and in Mumbai in general, really. Tourists seemed to find him upsetting, which amused the hell out of him and made him twice as likely to loiter in these places when he had time to kill. He handed the clips back to Ken.

"There ya go, kid. Don't say I never gave ya anything." Lancia commented, even though this was technically the second time he'd given Ken pins for his hair. He really hadn't expected the pins to turn into a thing, but they had. Ken hadn't taken those damn pins out of his hair except to sleep and shower since he'd put them in on the boat. He wondered if he'd take them out now or if these new fancy ones would just be added to his hair rather than taking the place of anything.

"Cool," Ken replied, grinning widely and fastening the extra clips into his hair. Well, that answered that. "Are we picking up Pav bhaji for dinner?"

"Yup, for us. His majesty's voice has demanded biryani so biryani he shall have. How anyone can stand to eat so much damn biryani, I will never fucking know. But since we have to go across town to get it for the spoiled little bastard, I figured we might as well enjoy some Pav bhaji. We can also stop off and pick up some kabobs too, the spicy kind you and Chikusa like that he hates. "

"I knew there was a reason I liked you, old man," Ken replied, his step just shy of a skip.

"Can the 'old man' shit or they'll never find your body, kid."

Ken laughed, half his attention darting back and forth from booth to booth looking for more shiny things he just had to have, no doubt. The kid was in a good mood today, of course, he usually was. Mumbai agreed with Ken in a way it didn't with the rest of them. He liked the heat, the sun, the bazaars and the people. Something about the way the smell of spices made it difficult to focus in on any one scent. He didn't pretend to understand, he was just glad someone was enjoying the time they were spending here. And since Ken was having such a good time, he might as well get to the real reason he'd invited Ken to come along out of the way. It wasn't like there was ever going to be a less awkward time to bring this shit up. Might as well just get it over with. He switched from the English they'd been using to Italian as he figured that was the best he was gonna do privacy-wise in such a public place.

"So, what do you know about sex, kid?"

And at that Ken promptly tripped over his own feet and only Lancia's quick reflexes saved him from a tumble into a table piled high with shoes. He let out an undignified yelp, flushed bright red and peddled backwards as he tugged away from the grip Lancia had on his arm barely avoiding landing himself in another stall (this one filled with stacks of loose cotton shirts), "Wh-what?! I don't… who… what… no…uh, what was the question?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, relax, kid. You can get this talk from me or from Mukuro. He's been bitching about it all week and it's just a matter of time before he just freaks the fuck out and embarrasses the hell out of you. Probably in front of Chikusa and, if he's really feeling pissy about it, probably half the neighborhood as well."

"Can I just not talk to either of you? Is there a never talk about this ever and learn stuff from watching TV or maybe just a pretend I don't have a dick at all option?"

"Fuck no, just calm down already. It's not gonna be that damn bad. Look, all I was gonna say is that if you jerk off regularly, it'll help with the wet dream thing."

Ken groaned, slapping his hands over his blisteringly red face. "Oh fuck's sake, come on! You just said you _weren't_ gonna embarrass me! And then you went straight to the most embarrassing thing! What the hell, Lancia? And how do you even know about that? Oh fucking fuck, does Chikusa know about that? Did he tell you? No, no fucking way. This suuuucks!" He wailed, dragging the last word out, turning his face to the sky and waving his arms around like a crazy person.

"Would you chill the fuck out already? Fuck's sake, kid, people are gonna think I'm trying to kidnap you or sell you or something the way you're carrying on. First off, I never said I wasn't going to embarrass you. I just implied it'd probably be less embarrassing to talk to me now than deal with Mukuro being a bitch about it later. Second, I know because _Mukuro_ told me. Though, even if he hadn't, I would have figured it out eventually. Who the hell do you think does your laundry, eh? _Fairies_? And also, in what world would _Chikusa_ of all people come and talk to _me_ about _you_, huh?"

Ken made a face, "But why would Mukuro… _oh_. Oh, _shit_." He clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes comically wide.

"Yeah, there ya go, now you've got it," Lancia rolled his eyes, grabbing Ken's shoulder and steering him in the direction of the car. People were staring and it was making him nervous and it would freak Ken out if he noticed.

Though not quite as much as it would freak him out to know about the blond kid a few stalls back who was very distinctly not looking their way at all. Yeah, that kid and his very particular lack of attention to the spectacle Ken was making of himself was almost certainly going to be a problem. "He's still not quite back to fighting fit still so his control is kind of wobbly or some fucking thing. He asked me to talk to you because I'm pretty sure he thinks the idea of me talking to you about this sort of shit just amuses the hell out of him. I don't fucking know. Now, just believe me when I tell you that this is nowhere near the most embarrassing thing I could have said to you about it. But that's all you absolutely need to know about right now. It's a perfectly normal thing. Most guys and probably a fair number of girls go through it. You do know how to jerk off, don't you? Because I really don't think either of us are down for that particular talk. You're gonna have to look that shit up on the Internet or something."

The tips of Ken's ears turned bright red and he hunched his shoulders, staring forcefully at the ground as they continued on their way. "Yeah, I… uh… yeah. I know about that."

"Okay, good for you. Have at it, as I said, it'll probably help. You plan on having sex at some point, you let me know and we'll talk about all that stuff then. I don't want you hurting yourself or anyone else and you will if you don't know what you're doing. Got it, kid?"

Ken glanced back up at him, surprised, momentarily forgetting his embarrassment. "…Wh-what do you mean hurt myself? What the fuck would I be doing that I'd…"

Lancia grinned widely, he'd be lying if he said he hadn't been hoping for that question, "Boys."

"Ugh, come on! What the fuck? Why would you even say that? No! Never mind, I don't wanna know why!" Ken yelped, waving his hands at Lancia as if he could shoo him away. Lancia chuckled at the reaction, but stopped smiling altogether when Ken went uncharacteristically quiet for a long moment before commenting in what he probably thought was a nonchalant way. "Besides, I mean, it's supposed to be girls, isn't it?"

Lancia slanted a sideways glance at him, disbelieving. "You can not possibly be that fucking stupid."

"Hey! Don't call me stupid!" Ken snapped stopping in the middle of the street and glaring at him for all he was worth. "How the fuck am I supposed to know what's normal, eh? I live with three other guys and we travel all over the world killing people. I literally don't know anyone else. The only people I've talked to for more than five minutes besides you guys were those assholes on the ship and everything I told them was a lie. I mean, come on, normal is out the fucking window on pretty much every level, isn't it?"

He supposed Ken did have a point. Out of the four of them, he himself had probably had the healthiest and most well adjusted upbringing even when you considered the part where Mukuro came in and used him to kill everyone that had a hand in that upbringing and that said enough about the situation right there. Sighing, he wheeled back around to face the tough little bastard staring up at him defiantly with red cheeks and a sneer. He reached out and ruffled the back of Ken's fluffy hair and offered him a crooked smile, before using his grip on Ken's head to urge him forward so that they could keep moving. "Normal would be too damn boring anyway. Look, you're a murderous little shitheel sometimes, but other than that there is nothing wrong with you. You're a great fucking kid and it doesn't matter if you're into girls or boys or both or no one at all. There's no right way for you to be, okay? People like us don't live long enough that we can afford to sweat the small stuff, so you might as well try to be happy. Just grow up and be yourself and love whoever you want, however you want, and don't worry about the rest of the bullshit, because it doesn't matter. Except, you know, maybe stop murdering so many fucking people. Seriously, you little bastards have a problem."

He remembered being Ken's age and older still. Being big and gangly and awkward and strong enough that no one was ever really willing to get in his face about who he was or what he did or didn't do with his free time. How the other men in the family had joked around and kidded with him and tried to hook him up with girls. How there had always been an edge of disbelief and meanness to it when he always refused. He hadn't held it against them and they'd never given him too bad a time about it, but he'd known in a disconnected way that his strength made them willing to overlook the oddities of his personality and that some of the little punks talked a whole lot of shit behind his back as a result.

He'd loved his family, loved them still, but they hadn't been perfect. Nothing real or worth having ever really was. For all that they'd given him a place to belong and he'd have done anything for them… he hadn't always been happy. Sometimes family made you feel nine feet tall and sometimes they made you feel two inches tall and that had been what his life was before. Life was messy and fucked up sometimes, but if he'd learned anything from the last four years it was that they were just…

"You think I'm great?" Ken asked brightly, his grin huge, the sneer and the embarrassment a distant memory.

…Just _stupid_, fucking kids, but they were _his_ stupid, fucking kids. Least he could do for them was make sure they always felt just the right size.

"See, I should have fucking known that's what you were going to end up taking away from all that. That's my fucking problem, you know? I'm too nice to you, little punks. Mukuro is _absolutely_ giving you the actual sex talk. "

"Then I'm never, ever having sex," Ken said, his face both dead serious and a little green around the edges.

Lancia snorted, rolling his eyes, "Can't say that I blame you on that one. You need new sneakers?" He pulled Ken to a stop in front of another shoe stall, making a show of picking through the shoes on display. "What size are you wearing now?"

Ken frowned, clearly confused by the sudden shift in conversation, "How the fuck am I supposed to know?" He lifted one foot, grabbing hold of it and twisting it up so he could look at the sole of his shoe. He had to hop around a little to keep his balance and almost went crashing into the shoe table- until Lancia reached out to steady him- scowling at the bottom of his shoe like it said something nasty about his mother. "I think that's supposed to be an 8, maybe? I don't fucking know. Why are we even talking about new shoes anyway? These only have a couple holes in them. And they're just little ones."

People were beginning to stare again as Ken dropped his foot and straightened. "Do we really gotta get new shoes _now_?"

Yup, that sealed it, that kid was definitely following them.

He was still a steady two stalls behind them, still pointedly not looking at them, and now he was also trying very hard to pretend he was interested in a purse being sold by a very enthusiastic man in a bright red shirt.

The kid was good, but he wasn't quite that good. People like that man were half the reason that a bazaar was a total bullshit place to tail someone if you didn't have a couple people helping you.

"Nah," he clapped a hand down on Ken's shoulder and steered him away from the stall. "We'll get something for you later after we figure out what size you actually wear. Let's get going, huh?"

Ken frowned hard, wrinkling his nose, "What the hell'd we stop for then?"

"Just happened to think of it that's all. C'mon, we should really get going," he squeezed Ken's shoulder a little too hard and tapped two fingers three times, flat, against Ken's back. He felt Ken tense and he knew he'd gotten the message. It had seemed fucking stupid when they were working out signals like this a couple months ago, but damned if he wasn't glad now that Mukuro was and probably always would be a paranoid little bastard at heart. Fortunately they'd parked in a narrow, fairly secluded alley several streets away from the bazaar. He thought he remembered the alley being next a building that had a couple of overhanging balconies a couple floors up too. Most of the buildings in this part of the city did. "Don't want to keep the boys waiting. You know how they get."

"I do," Ken murmured, cracking his neck and set about straightening the pins in his hair as they turned from one street onto another and then onto another. As they turned finally into the alley where they'd parked, he slipped a cartridge from the pouch in his pocket and clicked it into place over his teeth. The change was almost instantaneous and Lancia held out his hands, Ken slid a foot in and braced against his shoulders as Lancia hefted him up, flinging him into the air. The abilities the cartridge gave him took care of the rest, allowing him to easily scale the narrow alley walls by bouncing from wall to the other until he reached a balcony two floors up. Lancia continued a bit further down the alley and finally slid behind a van parked halfway down the alley from which he could easily see the mouth of the alley reflected in the rearview side mirror of the car in front of him and they waited. The boy arrived less than a minute later. He turned into the alley and paused briefly at the mouth, clearly suspicious. Lancia jangled his keys and commented in English, his tone purposefully casual, "So, we should probably stop off and get some dessert too, right?"

The boy seemed to relaxed a bit, taking one step into the alley, than two than a dozen; he was four car lengths down the alley before he stopped again. Lancia didn't blame him, he would have been a little nervous too if he hadn't heard a car starting up or more conversation by now. The boy frowned, taking a step backwards than two. Of course, the boy had made that decision a touch too late as Ken dropped from above him, hitting him like a ton of bricks and knocking the boy to the ground hard. The kid yelped, struggling almost immediately under Ken's increased weight, flailing wildly and clearly trying to get to his jacket pocket. Lancia came around the van and crouched down beside the boy, fishing around in his jacket pocket and coming up with a bottle of pills and a handkerchief. "Let me guess, you have a fucking heart condition, am I right?" Lancia inquired shaking the unlabeled bottle of pills at the boy who just glared up at him with big blue eyes.

"Thou had best release me or my Master shall be furious," the boy replied in weirdly accented Italian.

"I'll tell you what, kid. You tell me who the fuck your Master is and why the fuck you were following us like a shady little stalker and _maybe _I won't kick your fucking teeth through the back of your skull," Lancia snarled, his fingers tightening around the bottle.

"You know," a voice called in Italian, his tone conversational as it echoed down the alley. "I thought I recognized you when they showed me the surveillance photos, but I wasn't absolutely sure. Seeing you in person though... you're Matteo Salvatore's boy, right? What was the name… something with an 'L', wasn't it? Leo? Lion? Lane? __Lancia___!_ _That's_ what it was. I never forget a face, but I'm not the best with names. They used to say you were the strongest man in Northern Italy, am I right?" The voice was familiar. He'd only heard it once, years ago, but the man who owned it was the sort who left a lasting impression on those he met. He spoke almost lazily, as if he'd stumbled upon them in a bar, rather than in an alley pinning some kid to the ground. Well, probably not _just _some kid. He was pretty sure they'd just found out who the damn kid's master was. Too bad that was probably going to be the only piece of good news that was gonna come out of this day.

"And then one day you just… disappeared. Poof. About the same time the entire Cacciatore Famiglia was found murdered, as it happened. Heard that was a hell of a mess. Like someone had taken a wreaking ball to the place and all the people in it. Crazy stuff. Also, heard you weren't found among the dead. People said you must have done it, that you killed your entire Famiglia and I said, _nah_. I told everyone that I'd met you once and you weren't the sort. Suppose I was wrong about that one, eh? But then I hadn't put two and two together then. Guess I should have been more suspicious when Cacciatore's Fearsome Lancia disappeared about the same time we started hearing whispers about a man named Mukuro Rokudo. Some big damn mafia boogeyman who was always seen and heard of in places right before entire Famiglia were just inexplicably wiped themselves out. The crazy shit people have been making up about you sure makes it seem like you've been mighty busy. Wouldn't you say? Mukuro Rokudo?"

Lancia had frozen at the name of his former boss, but by the end… it was easy to breathe again. He wasn't Cacciatore's Fearsome Lancia anymore; he hadn't been that man for years and never would be again. And he didn't give two shits what this man thought of him. What he cared about was getting the kid at his side out of this alley alive, getting the boys the fuck out of India before the fucking Vindice showed up. Because there was no doubt in his mind that they were on their way, assuming they weren't already here.

So, if being Mukuro Rokudo would keep them alive, keep them safe, he could play the role of Mukuro fucking Rokudo for as long as it took. He smiled hard and deliberate as he pushed himself to his feet and turned to face the man standing at the mouth of the alley. "I remember you too, Iemitsu Sawada, head of Vongola's Consulenza Esterna Della Famiglia. So glad we could all take this time to get reacquainted. I'm guessing this is yours?"

He knew his smile was savage as he placed his boot squarely against the sneaky boy's blond head, pinning it firmly to the ground.

"Hey Basil, how you doing there, boy?" Iemitsu called, hands shoved in his pockets as he took a step forward.

"Tis but a scratch, Master," the oddly named Basil replied and since he sounded a little too comfortable, Lancia made a point of leaning a little more weight against the kid's head at the end so 'Master' came out slow and strained.

Lancia kept his gaze on the slowly advancing smiling man, but pitched his voice low, barely even a whisper, knowing Ken would catch it. "I need you to go. Run. Now."

"But-" Ken replied, whipping around to look up at him from where he was still crouched on Basil's back.

"Don't fucking sass me, kid, or I'll put you in the ground after I'm done here. Head on home, get the others and get the fuck out of here. If these guys are here, then the Vindice probably won't be far behind."

Ken stared at him hard for another moment, he could feel the kid's gaze practically burning holes in his chin, but he couldn't afford to take his eyes off the man who was still making his way slowly, inexorably towards them. He pressed down harder on the little spy's head, grinding it into the dirt until the kid cried out and he saw a hint of hesitation in Sawada's step. He reached forward blindly and slid his fingers into Ken's shaggy hair. They'd been together a long time, but they'd been fine on their own before Mukuro had brought him into their lives and they'd be fine once he was gone. "You need to go now, kid. It's time to go."

Ken made a soft choking noise, but he snatched the cartridge out of his mouth and jammed another one in and took off like a bat out of hell down the alley.

"Well, that's just _rude_. Who said you could leave the party, shorty?!" Iemitsu called, lunging forward to snatch hold of a motorcycle that was leaning against the wall and pitching it down the alley at Ken's retreating back. Lancia reached out and just managed to snag the tailpipe as it passed him, sending the motorcycle off course and careening into the wall where it sounded like it made a nice big hole. Iemitsu smiled at him good-naturedly, "Well, _well_, I guess they weren't exaggerating when they said you were strong."

"Guess not," Lancia replied, tapping his foot against the dirty blond head still pinned beneath his heel. "Interested in seeing if I'm strong enough to pop your apprentice's head like a grape?"

"Nah, I only have the one and I just got him broken in. Be a shame to have to start all over with another. Tell you what, how about you let him up and I don't torture you for days before I hand you over to the Vindice? How's that for a deal?"

"Tempting. Really fucking tempting, but surely you've got something better than that."

"You know, I think I just might! How about you let Basil there up and come along with us for a chat and I forget about the three-bedroom apartment you've rented in South Mumbai. About the three boys you live there with. They look awfully familiar, you know. They're all rather memorable. I'm pretty sure when I read about Mukuro Rokudo being captured in Spain a few years that he was captured with a bunch of kids. Must be awful important to you for you not to just ditch them in prison or afterwards. Henchmen are easy to replace, but children…? Not so much. And I should know. Got a son of my own, you know. Light of my life. So, do you want to release my apprentice or do I have one of my operatives put a couple bullets in those boys of yours? It's no trouble. All it'll take is a phone call."

"You hurt them, it'll be the last fucking thing you do, Vongola, I promise you that." Lancia growled, lifting his foot just enough that the kid beneath was able to scramble out and away.

"No need for that, I'm a man of my word," Iemitsu replied smiling. "Long as those boys don't get in my way, I'll let them keep on living. They come for you though and it's gonna be a very different conversation."

Lancia snorted, rolling his eyes, "No need to worry about that. If there's one thing those brats understand it's how to save their own skin."

"So you say, so you say. I guess we'll see, won't we? Well! I suppose we should really get on with that torture, huh? I'm sure the Vindice are already on their way, but then you probably guessed that. This isn't your first time after all. I'll tell ya, they have just the most uncanny knack for knowing when I've found something interesting to do with my time." Iemitsu commented, slapping a hand against Lancia's shoulder and leading him out of the alley. "Don't worry. We'll start off with something light. How do you feel about bamboo?"

"I feel that it probably doesn't much matter how I fucking feel about it."

"Well, you're right about that. So, tell me, do you prefer Lancia or Mukuro?"

"You can go ahead and call me Lancia. Since we go so far back and all, but your shitty apprentice can call me Mr. Rokudo. He's fucking terrible at his job."

"Aw, don't say that, you'll hurt his feelings. He can't help that he's terrible at tailing people."

"__Master___!_"

Iemitsu shrugged amiably, opening the back door on a white panel van parked just beyond the alley and shoving Lancia inside. "Sorry, Basil, it's completely true. You got caught tailing them and then you let them lead you right into a trap. Double failure. You're going to be up all night doing extra training as punishment."

**-ooo-**

**KEN**

"Fuck _you,_ you _fucking_piece of fucking useless fucking _garbage_," Ken snarled throwing his phone against the wall as hard as he could, it bounced and shattered and he felt shards bounce back at him, slicing open his bare arm, but he didn't fucking care about that. He turned and kept running towards home, because his stupid fucking phone was a total piece of crap and it got shitty signal everywhere in this damn city and nobody was picking up. He'd left him. He'd just fucking left him. He'd told him to go and he went because he knew it was important. More important that he warn Mukuro and Chikusa because Lancia wasn't… Lancia wasn't…

He wasn't like them. He didn't want to be with them in the first place, right? So, this… this was…

_"__It's time to go."_

He could deal with Lancia betraying them. He kind of had half expected that would happen someday, they all had probably, it wasn't like Lancia was with them because he _wanted _to be or anything. So that would have been... it would have sucked, but it would have been... this. He couldn't deal with him sacrificing himself for them. Because whoever the fuck Iemitsu Sawada was, he was pretty fucking sure he wasn't just looking to have a chat and Lancia wouldn't have told him to run if he thought he could take him.

"Fuck," he ran faster, as faster as his legs would carry him, because he needed to get home. He needed to get to them, to make sure they were _safe_.

Mukuro would know what to do, he always did.

**-ooo-**

**MUKURO**

Mukuro yawned heavily and rolled onto his stomach staring aimlessly into the darkness of his room. He wasn't tired exactly, or at least no more tired than he ever was, but he'd spent the last few hours listening to his accountant prattle on to his one of his marks in England about alterations to his investment portfolio there and that was always exhausting. Investments were important as they were what kept them flush with cash and able to go where they wanted, when they wanted, but talking about them was tedious at the best of times.

Since New York he'd made a point of diversifying, of distributing his holdings and investing and buying properties of interest in several countries through different marks and varied holding companies. He couldn't be certain how much information Esterneo had gleaned from him so he'd made a point of liquidating all his previous holdings and burying or burning the things that couldn't be liquidated until he was confident that he'd managed to erase every last vestige of information Esterneo might be able to use to track them down in the future.

He'd also had to void all his marks, changing them out for new pawns that weren't easily associated with the old ones when he could afford to do so. The work of years and because he'd been careless he had to start again virtually from scratch. It was irritating, but the annoyance would help him remember the lesson. As if there was even the slightest chance that he would forget.

Once they'd arrived in Mumbai, he'd started the long, slow process of rebuilding. He bought property, hired new accountants and brokers to handle his new accounts. Once the finances had been settled he'd then set about creating a hundred different identities, passports, entire lives for the four of them in a number of different countries. Tucking away supplies and weapons in a hundred different safe houses and hideaways across the world. This way they would always have somewhere to run to, somewhere to hide. Because he had no doubt, despite his best efforts, that they would spend all their lives running unless a better solution presented itself.

He'd been on edge since New York and he knew, intellectually, that to call it paranoia was actually probably a kindness. He was obsessed with a safety he would never feel, a security that could never be achieved, less for himself and more for them. He knew his fear was driving him faster and harder than his ambition ever had. It kept him awake for days at a time, outside himself more often than not, wandering from pawn to pawn setting plans in motion, eliminating loose ends and building those hideouts that he could only hope would be able to do the job for which they were intended.  
He knew they worried, all three of them in their own way, but he couldn't seem to quite manage to the reign it in, to bring his fear under control. So, he just tried to steer clear of them as much as he could, claiming he was busy and passing orders through Lancia whenever possible. He knew a lot of that inability to bring his emotions to heel was due to how badly he'd wreaked himself in New York and how he'd then overextended himself in order to kill his marks and demolish most of what he… they owned in the aftermath. The fact that he still hadn't fully recovered and that he was only delaying that recovery by acting as he was, by continuing to overextend himself by building up new pawns and resources. It was a vicious cycle, one he couldn't, wouldn't, bring himself to stop. If he stopped, if let himself have a moment to think, he would need to think about what had happened to him, to them and what it meant and he… he couldn't...

Three bodies floating just out of reach on a sea of blood.

Sinking into darkness, being consumed by it, not wanting to escape.

_No._

Not that.

He didn't want to think about fever dreams and delusions and… no.

That darkness, deep and fathomless, and so very, very _quiet_.

_No._

Just… _no._

It was better if he just kept moving, if he kept planning and plotting and setting things in motion.

They'd been in Mumbai for eight months and it felt like too long. Like if they didn't move on soon they wouldn't be able to move on at all. They'd been in New York for nine months when the world came crashing in on their heads so he thought he was justified in wanting to go, to leave here, to move somewhere else before they had been here that long. They had the apartment until the end of the week and he had made them airline reservations that would take them to Greece. From there they'd travel back to Italy and pick up where they'd left off until a more interesting opportunity presented itself. As plans went, he knew it was loose at best, but it would keep them on the move and that seemed like the most important thing right now. He'd managed to place his mark on two employees of the Marx Trade Coalition a few days ago. Just entry level technicians, one in security and another in acquisitions, but they were both reasonably compatible and he'd be able to use them to mark more useful targets that would allow him better access to CEDEF members when they were in town.

But he hadn't had a chance to do anything with them yet and he knew he should really spend some time advancing his prospects there since it was always easier to do these sorts of possessions when he was in close proximity to the mark. Over the years he'd learned how best to apply his particular talents to best advantage and when it came to choosing and building a mark for a long-term infiltration, he'd come a long, long way from Lancia and inexplicable blackouts. Building a decent mark required patience, time and imagination and at least a modest amount of compatibility. With straight possession, the kind he could force with the bullet or with the sixth path, the temporary sort he only needed to hold for a few moments or hours, he needed very little other than brute strength of will and a mark to grant entry to bend the person to his whim and get whatever task he needed completed done.

Long-term possession was considerably more complicated. It required a careful combination of the sixth and first realms and was not unlike building a Jenga tower. He had to sift through memories, find the most pertinent ones, the ones that most informed the mark's actions and learn them by heart. Then there was the matter of layering in illusions within the mark's mind to shift his perception of reality to what he needed it to be in order to make the actions he took as the mark make sense. He couldn't afford to waste weeks, days or even continuous hours with any single mark without a compelling reason to do so which made it incredibly important that he should be able to come and go, slipping in with minimal disturbance like a stone slipping beneath the surface of still water. Some disturbance was impossible to avoid, but it was a generally simple matter if he built his tower well, to slip in and back out again, making changes and adjusting parameters and doing this or that and sliding back into his own body again leaving the mark know the wiser.

He could hear Chikusa watching something on TV in the main room, but he had the volume turned low so it was only a rumble of voices, nothing distinct and not enough to distract him. A glance at the red blinking light of the clock on his nightstand told him he probably had at least an hour before Ken and Lancia came back with food. That was plenty of time to get some work done and no excuse to put it off again.

Mukuro sat up and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes and concentrating on the shape of the mark he'd left on that security technician.

He blinked once, twice, and found himself sitting at a security desk in the main building of Gravitas Imports. It was a front company for Marx, one that dealt with their most particular clients of which, according to his research, CEDEF was one, though he hadn't seen any clear indications of CEDEF as yet during his time in Mumbai.

"…ou hear me, Aarav?"

"No, sorry, what was that?" Mukuro replied, cracking his neck as he used a shred of illusion to cover the discoloration of his eye before turning to face the speaker. He was passingly familiar with the rhythm and tones of Hindi now, but he hadn't spent enough time with it that it was second nature like some of the other languages he'd experienced so it was still challenging to hold conversations with native speakers.

"I said," the other security guard whose name was… Veer. Veer who was a man that Aarav he had known for years and disliked just as long. Aarav thought he was a bit of a snob and resented that he talked down to him as if he were a rookie even though Veer had been on the job a month less than he had. In short, Aarav thought Veer was a bit of a jackass and wasn't shy about letting carry through in his body language even if he never said it outright. That was an easy enough attitude to mimic, the body would inevitably already be conditioned to react appropriately all he had to do was let it. Verbal responses would need to be mildly passive aggressive in general. "That they're bringing someone in so you're gonna need to clear that blond fella from this morning in with the kid and one additional."

"Who's the additional?" He replied, only half paying attention to the conversation as he slid through Aarav's memories of the day in an attempt to find the man and the kid Veer had mentioned.

"How am I to know? I only know what they tell me and since they haven't even bothered to give us names for those people, I can't see why you would expect…"

"I suppose it would be a bit much to expect you to know something like that," Mukuro said tersely in Aarav's voice even as panic stirred in him as he found the memory he was looking for. A man and a boy. He didn't know the boy, but he recognized the man. Iemitsu Sawada some distant stirring memory of another life whispered and he certainly recognized the insignia on their ID cards.

He blinked and he was back in his room, his pawn left to deal with the fallout of his terse comment with only the barest of instruction. Dread pooled in his stomach as he reached out for the familiar feel of Lancia and was flooded with anxiety even as he felt the shudder of his presence slip down Lancia's spine.

_You gotta move, kid. They have people watching the apartment. Ken should be on his way back if he isn't there already. Take him and get the fuck out of India while you can._

_Why aren't you fighting?_

_Did I fucking stutter when I said they have people watching the apartment?_

Mukuro felt the beginnings of anger stirring and he squashed the feeling. He didn't have time for anger, _I don't recall ordering you to do something so stupid._

_Yeah, well, there weren't a whole lot of smart options available._

_Well, I suppose you should be glad I'm here to inform you of the obvious ones then. Kick the door off the back of the van and jump out._

_I am not fucking doing that. That's a horrible fucking idea._

Mukuro scowled, _If you've got a better one that doesn't end in torture and prison and all our secrets scattered across the dirty ground than I'd love to hear it._

_You go. The Vindice will be here sooner rather than later, I'll go to prison. It's not that big a deal. You kids lay low for a while, stay the fuck out of trouble and steer clear of Vongola._

_It most certainly is a big deal. You're useless to me in prison._

_Aw, shucks, kid. I'm gonna miss you too._

_I'm not going to miss you. I wouldn't even if you were dead. Kick the door off the back of the van and jump out. Now._

_I told I'm not fucking doing that! For all you know, I try to escape and some sniper or something kills Chikusa. Do you really want to press your luck?_

"Chikusa! Get in here and stay away from the windows!" He called, knowing that Chikusa wouldn't argue with him, he'd just do as he asked. That was one of his favorite things about Chikusa. If only other people in his life were more like Chikusa.

_There. I am done debating this with you. _Mukuro opened his eyes and he was in the back of a panel van, long legs stretched out in front of him his back pressed against the side panel. "Oh, for fuck's sake, you're not even restrained, you asshole."

_The _mouth _on you, kid._

_It's the mouth on you, asshole. It feels unnatural to say anything in your voice and not curse up a storm. You really are a terrible role model._

Lancia snorted, _Right. Stop fucking around and get back to the apartment, kid. You need to pack._

_I'd thank you to remember that and stop making me lead you around by the nose._ Mukuro shot back, sliding into position in front of the doors. As he'd suspected, there was no simple way to unlock them from the back but two swift kicks with both feet were enough to launch the doors off the back of the van, breaking them at the hinges and sending them spinning out into traffic. The cars following the van down the bumpy road slammed on their brakes, laying on the horns even as he forced Lancia's body up and out to the edge of the opening. He tucked his body into a roll as he jumped up and out onto the sidewalk, he hit hard and rolled several yards before he crashed into a wall. He couldn't feel the pain of it, he knew that it had probably hurt quite a bit judging from the amount of cursing Lancia was doing in the back of their mind.

_No one likes a backseat driver, Mr. Lancia._

_Then fuck off and let me do the driving already before you break something of mine._

_Be happy to if I could trust you'd really give it your all._

_What the hell would be the point of dawdling now? You just kicked the doors off their van. If he isn't calling his agents to pick you kids up, I'll eat my fucking shoes. So, get going already. Get Chikusa and Ken and get the hell out of there. Contact me when you know where you're going._

_I am going to be checking back in on you._

_Oh my god, who are you, my mother? Fuck off, kid. I said I'd try, okay?_

_Do better than_ try_, ___Mr. Lancia.__

He blinked and he was back in his room in the dark. Bright sunlight from the hall flooded in before he'd even fully shrugged off the clinging feel of Lancia's mind as Chikusa shoved the door open. He stepped inside and looked at him expectantly, the slightest touch of surprise on his face.

"CEDEF is here and they've called in the Vindice. We need to move."

Chikusa nodded, taking in the information and moving immediately to the more pertinent issues, "Ken and Lancia?"

"Lancia is an idiot, but Ken is on his way here. Lancia will meet us later or I'm going to kill him. Pack for both of you. Only what we can't replace. Steer clear of the windows as apparently Lancia is worried about the possibility of a sniper. Hurry."

If it had been Ken or even Lancia they would have asked questions, protested, done any number of things that would have cost them precious time. Chikusa just nodded, accepting the situation for what it was and ducking out of Mukuro's room and into the room he shared with Ken, presumably to gather their things. Yes, that was absolutely what he valued most about Chikusa; he was quick to understand and quick to act and that made him absolutely invaluable.

Mukuro stood and left his own room behind, he didn't need anything besides the trident that he plucked off the dresser on his way out of the room. He ducked across the hall into Lancia's room. The Steel Serpent sat on the bed and he glared at it. There was absolutely no way he was going to be able to carry that. Even Ken could barely lift it even when using his Kong channel, the damn thing was just that ridiculously heavy. He'd have to have someone come for it and send it via courtier service… somewhere. Maybe to one of the safe houses or something, he'd have to think on it more later.

He turned back to leave the room and noticed there was a small picture frame on the dresser next to that awful hat they'd gotten for him on the ship. It was just as hideous as he remembered it being, but it was the picture frame that held his attention. He'd only been in Lancia's room once and it had been dark so it wasn't really a surprise that he hadn't noticed it before, but… it still bothered him. He stepped closer, his fingers trembling as he set them against the cheap steel frame. It was of the three of them sleeping on the couch in New York so Lancia must have been the one to take it.

He remembered that day.

After all they hadn't often slept like that in New York, but that day they'd all been out late working a large-scale assassination on Long Island. He hadn't gone out with them on such jobs often, but he hadn't liked the numbers on this one so he'd decided to come along just in case. They'd all flopped down on the couch when they'd come back home while Lancia went out to grab food. They'd woken up four hours later to cold Chinese food in the fridge and Lancia asleep in the armchair. Ken had had a video on his phone for months of Lancia laid back in the chair, mouth wide open, snoring softly with one of the long noodles from the Chinese food join laid under his nose and curled across his cheeks like a giant noodle handlebar moustache. He'd slept like that for an hour as the rest of them sat around eating the rest of the cold noodles and watching some terrible American sitcom on the TV. The phone was at the bottom of the harbor in New York. He'd made Ken destroy it and pitch the pieces before they left… just in case.

In this picture though, they were fast asleep. He could just make out a trace of blood on Ken's forehead where it was resting against his shoulder. His own head was laid against Chikusa's chest since Chikusa's arm was flung over his shoulders his fingers just visible where they curled in Ken's hair. Lancia had taken a picture of them like that, printed it and kept it on his dresser. Brought it with him from New York. Kept it.

As if it _meant _something.

As if _they _meant something.

"Hopelessly sentimental, Lancia," he murmured.

He tried not to think too much about why he snagged the picture from the dresser before he left the room to go pack their passports and what little cash they had on hand. He gripped the frame so hard that it cut into his palm.

**-ooo-**

**IEMITSU**

"Master? The prisoner appears to have escaped."

"It's interesting, right?" Iemitsu replied, steering the van down another street, bumping along at a steady pace. "He was really agreeable back there, I thought for sure he'd stick around. Then we call it in and not ten minutes later, he's making a run for it."

"Shouldn't we be chasing him?"

"Why bother? We know where he's going." Iemitsu replied, pulling a phone out of his jacket and dialing Oregano's number. There was a soft click that signaled the line was live, "What's going on there?"

"About a minute ago the only one I had a clear view of, the kid with the hat, looked startled just before he got up and closed the shade. Since then I haven't caught sight of any of them through the one small window that remains un-shaded. The third hadn't returned yet and since we've jammed signals coming in and out of the building and cut the phone lines there's no chance they were alerted that way. Since most of the shades are down I have no way of knowing if they're still there or not at this point, but I haven't seen them leave the building."

"Man, I love this. _Esterneo._ They were obviously totally nuts, but damn if they didn't have some cool science to balance out all that crazy. So, the blond kid uses some sort of teeth thing to activate physical abilities and maybe one of those kids is… what do you think? Psychic or something?"

"Possibly, sir. No confirmation on that one way or the other as of yet."

"You catch anything interesting from that kid with the hat yet?"

"No, sir. Though he seems to be handy with a yo-yo. He's been doing tricks with one all afternoon while watching TV in the living room. He seems to have both excellent depth perception and remarkable precision particularly for someone who wears what I assume are prescription glasses."

"Huh. A yo-yo. Well, everybody has hobbies, I guess, even freaky little Esterneo science experiments. He was still wearing the hat, huh?"

"Never takes it off, sir."

"Man, I really want to get ahold of Traditore's full intake records on them. He definitely wasn't wearing the hat in the security footage, but I couldn't see any obvious reason for why he would want to wear one constantly now. Of course, that doesn't mean anything the quality of those cameras was just awful. I mean, obviously, if he didn't need to wear it, he wouldn't. It's like a thousand degrees out here. Think he's like horribly disfigured or something? Got a big metal plate? Third eye? Man, the possibilities are _endless_."

"Really, sir?" Oregano replied, her voice practically dripping with disapproval. She was extremely skilled, but kind of a wet blanket.

"You're no fun. Fine, keep an eye on them, let me know if anything changes." He hung up the phone and stretched setting the phone down beside him on the seat. Aware that Basil was staring at him like he'd lost his mind. "What's the problem, Basil?"

"I still fail to divine thy purpose in this, Master. If it is merely to see the extent of their abilities, why not attack them directly?"

"Well, see, I have this theory, Basil. And I wasn't lying about the Vindice as they'll probably be here soon and they'd be here just that much faster if we actually started fighting it out in the middle of Mumbai. So, anyway, I've had money riding on this Lancia thing for years with Nono and I have every intention of collecting and taking my Nana out to a nice dinner the next time I head home. A dinner that's going to be paid for by my hard-earned winnings."

"Master, dost thou mean to say that thy whole purpose in this is to collect on a wager?"

From the way Basil was frowning at him, Iemitsu was beginning to suspect he was the only person in CEDEF with a decent sense of humor. "Well, I wouldn't say that was my whole purpose, just a nice bonus. The real purpose, obviously, is gathering information about the mystery that is Mukuro Rokudo. How can one man wipe out an entire Famiglia without giving himself away or even leaving a meaningful trace of himself behind? Without appearing to have ever been there at all? That's really something. That's the sort of power that wars are fought over, that people would kill to have. That's the kind of power the Esterneo Famiglia were shamed for creating when the possession bullet was outlawed and destroyed."

What he didn't say was that it wasn't every day someone was able to break out of a place like Traditore without killing anyone and without anyone having the damnedest idea how they did it either. Yet that bunch had done it and the only trace anyone could find of them for months afterwards were two accomplices who left a trail as wide as anything for the Vindice to follow and then killed themselves by stepping in front of a bus in Rome just before they could be recaptured. There was nothing about that that wasn't suspicious as hell. Especially when he started factoring it in with all the other odd occurrences he'd collected over the years.

He'd made a point of grabbing the surveillance from the prison and watching all the tapes from the time the group had been brought in until the escape and he'd never been more annoyed that a prison had cheaped out and not had cameras in the actual cells. Particularly the cell in solitary that had belonged to the third kid, whoever the hell he actually was. His name in the prisoner records was so obviously fake that it was astounding that no one had called him on it or done anything at all to try and find out more about him. There wasn't even a picture of him in the file and he was never quite looking at the cameras at all. The only reason he had any idea what that kid really looked like at all was by process of elimination. They'd now seen him a few times on surveillance of the South Mumbai apartment, but they still hadn't gotten a good shot of him. Just enough to see that he was dark-haired like the kid with the hat.

Equally weird was that the three who hadn't been in solitary confinement hadn't ended up in gen pop. It was an irregularity that no one at the prison had been willing or able to explain. The fact that they'd been held in that area by themselves was part of what made their escape relatively simple. Then there was the fact that there had never been any visible contact between these four and their accomplices prior to the breakout.

Only thing they seemed to have in common was a couple of suspiciously long exchanges with a guard named Accorsi who seemed to really like harassing the blond kid. He shot himself in the stomach the day after the jailbreak and eventually bled out. The investigators ruled the death an accident, but it takes a damn long time to die from a wound like that and Iemitsu had made a point of looking at the file on the incident and the pictures of the body that went with it. As far as he could tell that guard didn't appear to have made any attempt to get help. Instead he had just sat there and bled to death. It had probably taken hours and it had probably hurt like hell.

When he combined all that information with the rumors about Mukuro Rokudo and what he'd learned about the Esterneo Famiglia during his investigation of the estate with all the other little tidbits he'd picked up this past year, it started to paint a hell of an interesting picture.

He picked up the phone again and hit the button for Rosemary. If he was right, Lancia should be about halfway home by now. There was a click and then a soft, "Hey, Boss. I've got the target. The tracker worked like a charm and he's heading straight for the apartment."

"Good, take the shot."

"Aye, sir." There was a loud, echoing report of a rifle firing in the background, "Shot is good. One bullet, left shin as requested. He went down hard, but he's already getting back to his feet. He's tough."

"Yeah, he would be. If he survives all this, we should really see about recruiting him. He'd be a fun addition to CEDEF, right?"

"You realize that you're talking about a criminal who has murdered hundreds of people, correct? Wiped out entire Famiglia?"

"Details, details. Is he significantly slowed?"

"Doesn't appear to be, sir. He's limping a little, but nothing serious. He's getting close to the apartment building. Less than a mile."

"Already? Damn he's fast. Put another bullet in him. Left shoulder, if you would."

Another echoing report of rifle fire, "Shot was good. Oh. Oops. Might have nicked something vital as there's way more blood than is perhaps ideal."

"Good, keep an eye on him. I want to see what happens. Send Sage over to make sure he's down for the count then have him make the call. We'll be there soon." Iemitsu grinned as he hung up the phone, steering the van down another alley. "Hey Basil, do you know how you make a child angry?"

"Master?"

"You break his favorite toy."

**-ooo-**

**LANCIA**

"_Assholes,_" Lancia snarled, ducking down an alley that theoretically ought to take him out of the sniper's line of sight. Of course, he'd thought that about the last damn alley he'd turned down and yet the bullet in his fucking shoulder seemed to disagree with his assessment.

The bullet in is leg burned like fire, but it was manageable. It was the shot he'd taken in the shoulder that was the main problem. He could feel the blood that wound soaking through his shirt, sliding down to soak his pants as well, slipping into his socks and pooling in his shoes. If he didn't get back home soon he wasn't gonna make it there at all. Stripping off the t-shirt he was wearing, he balled it up and reached back to hold the damn thing against the wound. Wouldn't do much to staunch the blood flow, probably, but it was still better than nothing. He resumed the hobbled jog he'd been working on since the first bullet had caught him and continued heading towards the apartment.

He honestly wasn't sure if he was hoping that they were still there or that they'd already gone. On one hand, he wasn't super keen on the idea of dying today and that was beginning to feel pretty fucking imminent, what with all the shooting and the running. On the other, he sure as shit didn't want to get to that apartment and find them sitting around like a bunch of idiots waiting for the Vindice to run them down either. Not that he thought there was any chance in hell of that happening, Mukuro was smart and ruthless especially when it came to Ken and Chikusa and their safety.

And he'd honestly never been more fucking glad for that, because everything about this bullshit felt off. Like they were being set up or walking into a trap or something. He just couldn't understand what the hell it was exactly they were being set up for or why. What the hell was the _point_?

They were escaped convicts, wanted criminals, and CEDEF was just another part of the mafia for all that it stood apart from the Vongola Famiglia. They could have called the Vindice and just sat back and watched them take them without ever lifting a finger. If they knew where they lived, they could have just attacked them at any time. It wasn't like they never left the apartment or the apartment itself were exactly the fucking Bastille. It was just an apartment. If they wanted something from them, they could have just picked them up any old damn time. CEDEF wasn't a small organization by any means. They already knew all about him and if they thought the boys were just kids then they could have overwhelmed them with numbers or shot them from a distance if they were…

Unless they didn't think the boys were just kids.

Unless they knew they weren't anything close to ordinary.

This was about _Mukuro_.

Mukuro never left the apartment. Hell, he barely left his _room_ these days. If they didn't know what the boys could do, but they knew they could do _something_, Mukuro would be the toughest to figure out and attacking someone like that in their home would be a hell of a risky thing.  
But if you did something to draw him out, to draw them out, if you backed them into a corner so they had to panic, had to run…

Son of a _bitch_.

He hadn't escaped jack shit. They'd just let him throw himself out on a line to see what bit. He was fucking _bait_.

Well, fuck _that_.

He turned down another street, away from the apartment, and started looking for a place to hole up. Mukuro was a paranoid little bastard. He'd check in again to make sure he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. He just needed to find an out of the way place to hole up until then. He might not like Mukuro, but he suddenly liked these fucking bastards a hell of a lot less.

And then, out of nowhere, thunder cracked and lightning split the sky and it started raining.

Because… _of course_, it did.

"Thanks for fucking _nothing_, Mumbai," Lancia grumbled holding the now sopping wet shirt to his shoulder as he stumbled up to a boarded up building and busted the lock on the door with his free hand. He shoved the mangled lock into the pocket of his jeans and gripped the handle with his now free hand.

The hinges squealed and whined in protest as he wrenched the door open, ducking inside and slamming the door shut behind him.

**NOTES:**

I include fairly extensive notes for each chapter when I post it to Archive of Our Own (link is in my profile, I do believe) so you can check them out there if you're interested since they're a bit too long to post here, generally.) Thanks to everyone who comments, it's very nice to hear what you all think. :) Special thanks to iii, your comments are always delightful (and your comment on the last chapter tickled me quite a bit as I was editing this chapter when I read it ^_^).

Regarding Lancia: Mukuro purposefully calls him 'Lancia' or 'Mr. Lancia' in different situations. It occurred to me that that could easily come across as my just forgetting to add the 'Mr.' here or there, so I figured I should mention that.


	7. Season of the Witch

_"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."_  
— George Orwell (1984)

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
THE GANG  
MUMBAI  
2002

**CHIKUSA**

He knew they needed to go, he knew that, but he couldn't seem to make his arms release Ken. Ken had hit him hard the second he came through the door. Hard enough he'd bowled him over and sent them both slamming hard into the back of the couch. He'd taken most of the impact on his left arm and against the back of his head and both ached fiercely. He couldn't understand anything Ken was saying, it was being mumbled too fast and too broken against his throat and almost lost in what seemed like sobs, but there were no tears to accompany them. All he knew for certain was what Mukuro had told him and that everything about Ken screamed that something, that everything, was wrong. So, he made soft shushing noises and curled around him and ignored the pain and waited for those sobbing sounds to stop.

It reminded him uncomfortably of Mukuro.

Of the night they'd come home from a job when they were in New York to find the apartment dark and silent. It wasn't unusual that it was dark, but it was rarely silent. Mukuro often turned on the television or the radio while he worked, said he liked the noise. Ken had tensed up immediately, making a beeline for the bathroom as if he heard someone calling him and, he supposed, he had in a way. When they got close, he could hear the sound of the shower running even though there was no light shining out from beneath the door.

The bathroom had been lit only by the ambient light of the city streaming in through the tiny, dirty window over the toilet, the air heavy and humid with steam from the shower. It had been like stepping into a sauna and he had closed the door behind them, because whatever was happening in this room it wasn't something Lancia should know about if he came home early from work. He had slipped off his glasses, useless in the steam-filled room, and immediately understood what was wrong even if he still didn't understand how Ken had known.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
THE GANG  
NEW YORK  
2001

**CHIKUSA**

Something like dread or panic curled in his chest, tight around his vocal cords, as he caught sight of Mukuro through the cheap vinyl curtain liner they used as a shower curtain. Lancia kept threatening to get an actual curtain, but he hadn't followed through with that yet and probably never would. Lancia rarely ventured beyond the pawn store and the market at the end of the street when it came to buying things and neither sold shower curtains. Mukuro was curled on the floor of the shower, back to the wall, fully clothed and barefoot. His face was hidden against his knees, his skin red from the too hot water and his hair and clothes plastered to him. His pulse was elevated, his breathing unsteady as if he'd been crying or running.

"I'll get him some dry clothes," he murmured and Ken gave him a distracted nod before pulling aside the clear shower liner they used as a curtain and reaching into shut the water off.

He felt like a bit of a coward as he ducked out of the room, quietly, shutting the door behind him with a snap.

**-ooo-  
KEN**

"Hey," Ken murmured, moving slowly as he climbed into the tub with Mukuro, the water that had pooled in the bottom of the tub because of their shitty drain was scalding hot, but he ignored the way it soaked into his socks and pants, burning warm against his legs from knee to toe. He could smell the lingering hints of arousal in the living room. He'd smelt that often enough on random strangers over the years to understand what it was if not quite what it meant now. But he'd been able to hear the sound of Mukuro sobbing silently from the second he'd come in the door and it had sounded like a screaming. "Hey."

He slid close to him, pressing against his side and Mukuro shivered, loosening his hold on his knees slightly. By the time Chikusa came back in, he'd managed to coax Mukuro out of the tub and onto the shaggy bathmat that covered most of the bathroom floor and constantly got jammed under the door if you pushed the door open too far. He still had no damn idea what had happened or why Mukuro was so quiet or why he was letting himself be petted and coddled. He'd tried doing this to him once before, after a particularly nasty series of nightmares a couple months after Esterneo that had left him shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, and Mukuro had slapped his hands away as if the kindness hurt. And maybe it had. Ken had never pretended to understand Mukuro. He liked him, he'd kill and die for him, but he'd resigned himself to the fact that he'd probably never really understand him. But he didn't have to understand him to know that, whatever had happened, it had been bad.

He glanced up at Chikusa and then back to Mukuro and Chikusa set the clothes down on the counter and whipped the towel from the back of the door and wrapping it around Mukuro's slumped shoulders. In the end they all ended up laying together on that shaggy bathmat in the dark, curled in around each other soggy and damp. When Mukuro finally spoke, his voice was rough and whisper soft, like he was telling them a secret. It wasn't at all like he'd sounded on that first day, not really, but it felt the same. "I'm not… I'm not okay. Everything feels wrong."

They don't ask. Just wait to see if he'll say anything more about it, pressed against him and for a long time he doesn't and the only reason Ken knows he hasn't fallen asleep or something is because his heart is still beating too fast. Finally, he says, barely a murmur and probably mostly to himself, "I was trapped and I couldn't leave and I couldn't shut it out and…. Will you stay with me here? Just for a little while?"

"Like there was any chance we were fucking leaving," Ken murmured, burying his face against Mukuro's damp hair and reaching out to slip an arm around Chikusa's waist so that he could hold onto them both. "You're stuck with us. You're always gonna be stuck with us."

Mukuro had nodded and that had been the end of it. They'd just lain there together for a long time and it had been nice and awful at the same time. Eventually Mukuro had picked himself, stripped silently out of his wet clothes and put on the clothes Chikusa had brought in without bothering to dry himself any more than air and time had done. His old clothes had fallen with a series of soggy slaps, dashing water across the floor. His hair was still wet, clinging to his face and neck as he turned back to them, his expression back to the usual wry mask he favored. "Chinese food for dinner?"

"Sure, whatever you want." Ken replied, shrugging, already certain they'd never talk about this again.

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
THE GANG  
MUMBAI  
2002

**CHIKUSA**

He could feel Mukuro standing over them, probably alerted by the sound the door had made when Ken had sent it crashing into the wall. He knew if he looked up he would find that every line of him was all tension and impatience. He wanted to tell him that it was okay, tell them both it was okay, but he knew it wasn't. None of this was okay and there was a good possibility that they'd never see Lancia again. And it would always be like this. They would always be running and running from the past and the things they had done and would do and as long as he had the two of them he could deal with it, even if it would never be… okay.

Ken shuddered, his body stilling in that unnatural way that only possession could achieve. Ken was never so still or so quiet when left to his own devices, was utterly incapable of it. Chikusa glanced up at Mukuro, at the mark displayed in his red right eye, "You didn't have to do that."

"I did," Mukuro replied blandly as Ken's body slipped away from Chikusa and stood up; snagging the bag that Chikusa had dropped when Ken had knocked into him. "I need you both to make it out of here alive and we don't have any time for this."

Ken's face was completely blank, wiped clean of expression for a long moment then two and then he blinked and exhaled and he was himself again, although significantly calmer than he'd been only a moment before. He looked back and forth between Mukuro and Chikusa, confusion wrinkling his brow. "There was some kid following us… I… I don't know what happened after that. I ran back here? But… I can't remember why. I don't know what happened."

"I happened," Mukuro replied hitching his own backpack over his shoulder his trident held in one hand. He stepped forward toward the door and… wobbled. Ken and Chikusa both reached out a hand for him instinctively and Mukuro shook his head quickly, waving them off. "I'm fine. We don't have the time for any of this. The Vindice will be coming. CEDEF will be coming. You were with Lancia, he sent you back here to get us, I've set an illusion blocking the memory because if you don't have a clear head…."

He didn't say you'll be completely worthless in a fight, but they all understood that was what he meant. Ken nodded once, quick and sure.

"Anyway, I'll take the illusion down later, but now we need to go. Lancia will find us, I'll make sure of it, but we have to go."

"Okay," Chikusa breathed, curling the fingers of one hand into Ken's sleeve and clutching his yo-yo hard in the other. Ken nodded, sliding out the cartridge in his mouth and pocketing it before sliding a new one into place, the symbol for the wolf channel flickering to life on his cheek.

It felt like a bad omen.

The last time they'd tried to escape the Vindice with Ken wearing the wolf channel, it hadn't gone well.

"Let's go."

**-ooo-  
THEN**  
THE GANG  
SPAIN  
2000

**LANCIA**

"Move, move, move, move, move!" Lancia shoved Chikusa hard, sending the kid tumbling behind a burned out police vehicle as he swung the Steel Serpent out and around and through another group of CNP officers.

"C'mon," Ken snarled, his claws racking across one officer's chest before he switched to the Kong channel and threw a moped at another small knot of officers who were taking shots at them from behind the cover of a fountain in the middle of the square. "Where the fuck are they even all _coming_ from?"

"Do I look like I know the answer to that?" Mukuro snapped, his eye flaming brightly as he spun around and delivered a hard kick to the throat of one of the last remaining Mafioso standing, he put his trident through the man's eye a moment later and then he was already up and taking a swipe at burly man who had been attempting to grab him. Sometimes, most times, he regretted teaching Mukuro how to fight mean and fast and dirty. This wasn't one of those times. "And this is why we do not start fights with the mafia in the middle of town."

"This isn't my fault! That _fucker_ took a shot at me!"

"And you ripped his throat out for it," Chikusa interjected, a spray of needles flying over Mukuro's shoulder into the two Mafioso behind him. They fell to the ground writhing and foaming at the mouth, victims of one of the poisons Chikusa coated most of his needles with.

"He had it coming!"

"Not arguing that."

"Then what _are_ you arguing, Kappa? Get down!"

They all three hit the ground as one the cars that were currently on fire exploded, spraying burning wreckage and shrapnel in all directions.

"Mother_fucker,_" Ken snarled, shoving back to his feet, but he hobbled slightly a sizable chunk of what had probably been a fender stuck through the meaty part of his thigh.

"Ken!"

Ken waved off Chikusa's concern, cursing a few more times as he yanked the scalding hot metal out of his leg, shaking his burned hand and hissing after tossing the piece of fender at the end of an officer who was climbing unsteadily to his feet.

"We need to get out of here," Mukuro shoved his trident down, spearing through another officer before pulling it back out and marking two more. Those officers rose with Mukuro's mark in their eyes pulling their holstered weapons and shooting at the tires and driver of another incoming CNP vehicle.

"I'm open to fucking suggestions, kid," Lancia snapped. The viable exits were quickly filling up with CNP officers and terrified onlookers attracted by all the commotion. You'd think people would be fucking sensible enough to run away from the explosions, but fucking no. Instead they were all running to see what was going on like maybe there was a circus in town and they just hadn't fucking heard about it.

Assholes.

"What the fuck is that?" Ken's alarmed voice had Lancia turned back towards him and his eyes widened at the sight of what looked like a pitch black freight truck rolling into the square. Rolling over the dead and injured officers and civilians as if the driver didn't see them or, more likely, simply didn't care.

"That is the end of the road, kid," Lancia rasped, grabbing Ken by the back of his shirt. "Don't fucking fight them. Put your wolf cartridge in, put the rest away in the case and get down on your knees."

"Fucking _what_? I'm not-"

"_Ken_, do as he says," Mukuro snapped, his trident already reverting back to its original form. "Chikusa, you as well."

Chikusa nodded, his eyes soft with confusion behind his thin-rimmed glasses.

"What the fuck is _that_?" Ken yelped, as the doors at the rear of the transport swept open and the Vindice came into view.

"Just shut up, kid, just keep your fucking mouth shut. Cooperate and don't draw attention, any of you. We keep them focused on me and they should buy me as the leader, don't draw fucking focus." Lancia spat, his heart in his throat though he could understand the reaction. The way Ken and Chikusa's eyes widened and Mukuro's narrowed, because the Vindice were strange and kind of scary beyond all fucking reason even if you'd never seen them before, even if you had no idea what those tall gaunt figures in their ragged black coats and tall black hats, their faces and limbs wrapped in ragged white bandages like something out of a fucking horror movie. They called them the enforcers of mafia law, but as far as he'd ever seen they were just a bunch of sadistic ghoulish fucking monsters that got off on punishing people.

He'd seen them before, the Vindice, twice. The first time was when he was still just a runner for the family, when he was a kid younger that the boys probably were now and still carving out a life for himself on the streets of Lucca. There had been a woman, he wasn't sure what Famiglia she was a part of just that she was mafia and had killed a lover over something relatively minor, he remembered that much, and he remembered that the Vindice had come for her. It was like they didn't really exist in the world, normal people just walking by as if they weren't even there, as if the woman wasn't firing bullet after bullet at them as she tried to escape. She'd emptied an entire clip into them and they hadn't even seemed bothered then she'd thrown the gun itself at them and she'd run. Kicking off her heels, she'd run full-tilt up the hill away from where the transport that had carried them there had parked, her bare feet slapping against the cobbles. The Vindice had just seemed to watch her go, completely unperturbed by her struggle. They'd just stood there for the longest time, let her get all the way to the top of the hill and then one had raised an arm and a great iron chain with a shackle on the end had burst from his sleeve and shot up the hill. It cut through the air in pursuit of that woman, like a hound chasing down a rabbit. In an instant it had caught up to her, the shackle fastening tight around her throat and the chain stopping her dead, he'd heard the snap even from where he stood, halfway up the hill. That snap had seemed to echo through the town, loud as any gunshot and the woman had fallen back onto the ground like a broken china doll, her eyes staring sightlessly at the empty blue sky above as the Vindice reeled her in like a fish on a line.

Lancia watched her body pass in silence, watched it scrap and drag over rocks and sharp edges, leaving a trail of blood behind, faint but there. They'd reeled her all the way back to the foot of the hill, kept dragging her along until she lay at their feet, no longer a criminal, just a body broken. Only then did the shackle release and the body flopped to the ground. They left her there. Just seemed to float back into that big black van thing and left, leaving the body behind as if it didn't matter at all. Eventually people came and took the body away like it was just another piece of trash to be cleared up off the streets of Lucca.

Justice served, he guessed, for whatever that bullshit was worth.

The second time had been years later, after Boss had taken him in and given him both a family and a home to call his own. There had been this kid, son of one of the Cacciatore enforcers, who had always been into shady shit. Dealing here or smuggling stolen art there, he did all kinds of favors for different families that sort of thing. He always had something going on and he always seemed to think he was so damn slick about it too, but everybody knew what he was about. It had been years before the Boss had ushered Mukuro to their door, just a few months after he himself had been adopted into the Famiglia and brought to live there. That fucking kid, Alberto was his name, had come around looking to sell information to the Boss.

**-ooo-  
THEN**  
CACCIATORE  
ITALY  
1992

**LANCIA**

He'd been outside in the yard helping Gino unload a truck full of supplies when the Vindice had arrived. They'd just swept in like they owned the place and swept back out with a screaming, cursing Alberto struggling on the end of one of their chains. He'd watched them load him in the big black van and kept watching as the van wheeled around and rumbled back up the road, disappearing in a cloud of dust and spitting gravel.

"The fuck doesn't anyone stop them?" He asked and Gino sighed, patting him on the arm in that condescending way adults have that says they clearly know better and when you're older you'll understand about the stupid questions kids ask.

"They are the enforcers of law. You can not stop justice, you can only watch as it is executed and hope you are not the one who has committed the crime."

"Yeah, but what'd he do?"

"He sold secrets," Boss answered from the doorway and Lancia flushed, embarrassed to be caught asking what Gino had already indicated was a stupid question. "He sold some of our secrets in the hopes of gaining access to better secrets from another family. He was successful, but there is still a penalty to be paid for breaking the law. He is now going to pay that price."

"I don't get it. He sold secrets and somebody reported him for it? Why the hell would anyone do that?"

Matteo smiled kindly, coming forward to ruffle Lancia's hair, "Ah, of course, this is your first time seeing the Vindice, right? Well, no one knows for sure, because the Vindice are a tight-lipped bunch, but when it comes to the breaking of one of the most sacred laws of the mafia, they seem to know instinctively when and where it happens so they use that information to track down the offender. When it comes to serious crimes against the mafia, committed by members of the mafia, it's a bit of a different matter. There are no clear laws relating to the elimination of Famiglia or assassinations or the like. It's pretty much anything goes because the mafia has a way of policing their own. No Famiglia would tolerate one of their own killing another without an incredibly compelling reason, sex offenders are eliminated immediately upon discovery of such crimes, thievery and other minor offenses are also handling within each Famiglia or in negotiations with other Famiglia when the criminal and the victim are from different Famiglia. The Vindice rarely become involved in such things, but there have been instances when the crimes are so serious or the offenders so overwhelmingly powerful that no single Famiglia can easily deal with them and that's where the Vindice come in. In those instances, they are responsible for tracking down and imprisoning the offenders. Minor and non-violent offenders are taken to prisons like Traditore that cater exclusively to mafia criminals. The worst and most dangerous and violent offenders and those who break the most sacred laws of the mafia are taken to Vendicare to be personally guarded by the Vindice."

Lancia shivered at the thought of being locked up somewhere and guarded by those scary bastards. "Remind me never to do anything to piss those guys off."

Matteo smiled, chuckling softly, "I doubt that's something you'll ever need concern yourself with, my boy."

**-ooo-  
THEN**  
THE GANG  
SPAIN  
2000

**LANCIA**

Lancia for his part let the Steel Serpent's chain drop to coil at his feet and folded his arms behind his head, he stayed standing, smiling as the Vindice appeared, sweeping like angry black bats from the back of the transport. "I heard you fuckers have been looking for me! Thought I'd do your job for you!" He called, forcing a wide, taunting smirk he didn't feel. "Took you fucking long enough to get here, I thought you were supposed to be _good_ at your jobs."

The Vindice who stood at the head of the group swept forward and Lancia never saw the blow at all, but he felt it as it bent him double, clutching what felt like and probably was a busted rib. The shackle fascinated around his neck while he was still bent over, so tight it was difficult to swallow. Aborted cries of pain from Ken and Chikusa had him looking up momentarily panicked to find all three boys had similar shackles around their necks, the chains jangled as the Vindice who held the ends of those chains within the bilious sleeves of his ragged coat jerked them tight. It was enough to pull the kids forward and off their feet, but not quite enough to do more than stagger him, bent over as he already was.

So, he was still glaring up at the bandaged face as the boys hit the ground and if he hadn't been still standing, if he hadn't been looking right at the Vindice he'd never have seen it. The way the enforcer inclined his head, his hat dipping just slightly like he was acknowledging someone, Lancia turned his head, but he wasn't quite quick enough. All he saw was a dark-haired man in a neat black suit disappearing into the crowd, just the back of his head and then gone. Then there was no more time to think on the oddness of it as the Vindice was jerking him forward again, reeling him slowly and inescapably forward towards the black transport that would take them, rather inevitably, to prison.

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
CEDEF  
MUMBAI  
2002

**IEMITSU**

"What do you mean you _lost him_?"

"Just as I said, sir," Sage replied, sounding bored and generally less impressed by Iemitsu's irritation than Iemitsu that was smart or healthy. And that was why he liked kids like Basil. Kids who acted like Iemitsu's disapproval meant more than a hill of beans. Kids who were respectful, diligent, hard-working, who didn't give him any sass-mouth. Basil wouldn't be calling him to tell him how he'd somehow managed to lose track of a man with two bullets in him just because of a little rain. Basil would already be busy finding the one-legged son of a bitch and rounding him up like he was supposed to.

"Then find him. He can't teleport. He didn't vanish. So, just find him. He's probably passed out in an alley or something in the process of accidently drowning himself in a puddle. If we can't observe the results, it's not a very good experiment is it? So hurry up and find him before those kids skip town. I'll keep them distracted to buy you some time, but hurry up about it."

"Right, right," Sage grumbled, clearly displeased to be traipsing about in the rain. He wasn't a particularly cheerful individual in the first place, but he was an absolute drag when he had to do work in uncomfortable conditions.

"Don't right- hello? Sage?" Iemitsu frowned at the phone, "I think that little bastard just hung up on me."

"Master, _please watch the road_!" Basil commented, sounding incredibly tense as he gripped the seat with white-knuckled fingers.

Iemitsu turned his gaze back to the road and jerked the van back into the correct lane as an oncoming car laid on its horn. "Oops," he commented, tossing his phone to Basil who released his death grip on the seat to fumble around with catching it. Kid was way to high-strung, worried too much about the silliest things. "Do me a favor and look up those cell phone numbers we tracked to them. Try all of them and hand me the phone once someone answers."

"All fifty of them, sir?"

"Look at it this way, Basil, you'll almost certainly hit pay dirt before you have to dial all of them."

"Yes, Master."

**-ooo-  
CHIKUSA**

He ended up hotwiring a jeep in the parking garage. It started easily enough and Ken had hoped in up front and was already fussing about with the radio and Mukuro had already buckled into his own seat in the back by the time he climbed into the car and began adjusting the mirrors. When he glanced in the top rearview mirror, he noticed that Mukuro's eyes were open wide, flared in alarm and was paler than usual. "What is it?"

"I can't find Lancia."

"What the hell does that mean?" Ken snapped, craning around to look at Mukuro as Chikusa eased the jeep back out of the space, knowing that lingering there wouldn't solve the problem any sooner.

"Exactly what I _said_," Mukuro snapped back and Chikusa didn't blame him, either of them, they all three knew perfectly well what that likely meant even if no one wanted to say it aloud. There were only two things it could mean after all: unconscious or dead.

The garage door lifted and Chikusa immediately regretted his choice of vehicles.

"Ah, _come on_," Ken groaned, staring in disbelief at the pouring rain outside.

Chikusa glanced in the mirror and found Mukuro shaking his head, "It doesn't matter. I can take care of this." He closed his eyes, bracing a hand against the side of the jeep and between one breath and the next a real illusion of a canopy top and clear plastic windows slid into place over and around them sealing the jeep. Mukuro opened his eyes again and nodded, clearly satisfied with his handiwork. "Just go. We'll change out vehicles at the city limits. We can't waste anymore time. I'll keep trying Lancia while we're on the move."

Chikusa nodded and shifted the car into gear, the rain was loud as it pounded against the street, but he could still hear it when Mukuro's phone began to ring.

**-ooo-  
LANCIA**

The next thing he was aware of he was blinking awake, everything hurt, and he was facedown on a cold, concrete floor. For a minute, he thought he was back in prison already, but everything was too quiet for that. Prison had been loud even in the processing area where they'd had their cell. Here it was utterly silent except for the sound of rain pelting the roof and walls of the place, echoing too damn loud in the half empty space. Plus, he was soaking fucking wet though it was tough to tell now how much of that was blood and how much was the rain as he'd been shot fucking twice because CEDEF was apparently completely composed of demented fucking dickheads. He remembered realizing that he was bait and coming into the warehouse to hide, but things got a bit dodgy from there.

He shoved himself up onto his elbows with a heavy groan, pain sheering through his shoulder blade and back at the move. It wasn't so bad that he couldn't push through it, but it still hurt like a bitch. This was just turning out to be a truly lousy day. Shopping with Ken had been fine, but everything else had just been ridiculous.

Figured. It just fucking figured. The one time, the one fucking time, he actually wanted to feel Mukuro's creepy, obtrusive fucking presence in his head and the little bastard was keeping himself to himself.

The fucking stupid, fucking ornery little _bastard_ deserved what he got, honestly.

He pushed himself, rolling slowly and carefully onto his side so he could dig into his pocket for his phone. He didn't have high hopes that it had survived all the times he'd fallen on his damn face in the last hour…. Damn, he hoped it had only been an hour. He actually had no way of knowing how long he'd been out. All he really knew was that it hadn't been long enough to bleed to death or be found by those CEDEF fuckers, but that didn't really narrow it down all that much when they were on a clock as they almost certainly were. Fuck. It took more effort than it should have to actually pry the phone from his wet, bloodstained pocket, but in the end it was worth it. The cracked screen lit up as he pulled it free.

**19:07**

Lucky. He knew it had been coming up on 18:30 when they were leaving the bazaar, so he'd only probably been out for a minute or two. He flipped the cheap plastic phone open and dialed Mukuro's number.

Busy signal.

_Son of a bitch._

Seriously, who the fuck did that kid even know in Mumbai that he would call on the damn phone?

**-ooo-  
MUKURO**

His fingers tightened around the cheap plastic case, hard enough that he saw Ken wince so he was probably close to cracking the damn thing that was currently their only link to Lancia.

"Pardon me, I think you might have the wrong number," he hissed through gritted teeth in quiet, terse Hindi.

"I really don't think I do," the pleasant male voice on the other end of the line commented. "See, I might not know your name, boy, but I know your little friends. Chikusa Kakimoto and Ken Joshima, yes? Formerly of the Esterneo Famiglia. I'm pretty sure, whatever your name is, that's where you're from too."

"And you must be Iemitsu Sawada, leader of CEDEF. Are we supposed to be impressed that you've seen our records from Traditore? Seriously? I thought you were running an intelligence operation. That's just sad."

"Well, aren't you just a lippy little bastard? All right, how about this? I know about the suicides. All of them. I also know about what you did in Milan."

Mukuro closed his eyes for a long moment, forcing himself to remain calm even as fear rose up like a cobra preparing to strike in his chest. "You're going to have to be far more specific, I really haven't the faintest idea what you're going on about."

"Don't you? Well, let's see if I can jog your memory, hm? I've got a whole list of names here, feel free to sing along once you catch the tune," Iemitsu began rattling off names and Mukuro set the phone aside, already well aware of every accurate name Iemitsu might name. Though he had yet to regret a single death he'd been the cause of, he always made a point of remembering the names even if he remembered nothing else about them. It was a habit he'd picked up after Esterneo and one he'd kept whenever he was able. He reached for Lancia again and breathed a sigh of relief as the familiar pain struck through him and he connected.

**-ooo-  
LANCIA**

He breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the chill discomfort of Mukuro's presence slide around him, "About fucking time."

_I___'m sorry. You've been a little difficult to reach. What the hell is wrong with your body? Are you__bleeding_? Did they shoot you?_

Lancia snorted and lay back against the cold concrete floor. Mukuro always got upset about the weirdest fucking things. _Twice. Bunch of fuckheads. I don't know if the Vindice are actually coming or not, but I think this is all for your benefit. That's the only thing I can figure for why they're playing things the way they are._

_Delightful. I'm on the phone with him right now. He knows Chikusa and Ken by name; that we're originally from Esterneo, other things too._

_What other things?_

__That's none of your concern. Your concern is picking that broken body up and getting it in this jeep so we can get out of town. Where are you?__

_Fuck if I know. Some fucking warehouse with cold as fuck floors._

_Well, that really helps narrow it down. Well done._

_Sorry, kid, wasn't really paying attention to street signs._

_It's fine. I can get a general idea where you are like this, enough that we can get close at any rate. Just try not to die or pass out before we find you._

_Yeah, sure, kid, I'll work on that._

_And I'll deal with Sawada Iemitsu._

**-ooo-  
MUKURO**

"….Sanderson, Alex Sinclair…." Iemitsu's voice was reciting in an amused tone of voice that made it clear he knew that Mukuro wasn't really listening.

He brought the phone back to his ear, "What do you want? I assume there is a reason for all this."

"I have questions, you see, so many questions and I want answers. Answers I'm sure you can give me. Plus, I have a bet to win."

Mukuro counted to ten in his head in Hindi, then Italian, then again in English, French, Japanese and German before it became perfectly obvious that no amount of counting was going to get the job done. "You came here and overturned our lives… for a wager?'' He said it softly, slowly, but Ken still whipped around in the front seat to glare at the phone. He might not quite be able to hear Iemitsu's part of the conversation over the sound of rain pounding down on the jeep, but he'd definitely heard that. His eyes narrowed with rage.

"I'm gonna _kill_ that motherfucker."

Beside him Chikusa nodded, his gaze locked firmly on the road in front of him. Chikusa was the only one of the three of them that had bothered to take Lancia up on driving lessons, but he didn't enjoy doing it. Said it made him feel too out of control, that there were too many variables to account for. It made him anxious in the most optimal conditions. The rain probably made that anxiety much, much worse.

"Well, not _just _for a wager," Iemitsu answered as if it were the punch line for a joke he never got tired of telling.

Mukuro didn't even bother to hang up the phone, just tossed it over his shoulder, allowing it to flip through the illusion to crash and smash across the wet road behind them.

He could deal with a lot of crazy shit, but even he had his limits.

**-ooo-  
IEMITSU**

Iemitsu frowned down at the phone in his hand briefly before sighing, "Do you think it was something I said? Honestly, some people just can't take a joke."

"Master, no one appreciates your sense of humor." Basil replied gravely and Iemitsu glanced over at his pleasantly blank expression. Sometimes he couldn't tell if Basil was just that bland or if he was secretly mocking him.

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled finally, deciding that it was probably the better part of valor just to let it lie. "Give Sage a call. See if he's managed to track Lancia down yet." He glared out at the rain-soaked street filled with cars. "This should be the area. I just need to find somewhere to park. This is what I hate about big cities, none of them have decent parking."

"Yes, Master."

**-ooo-  
LANCIA**

_That man is an idiot._ Mukuro grouched, turning up like a bad penny at about the same time he'd finally managed to struggle to his feet, leaning against a large wooden crate, panting and sweating despite the chill that lingered on his skin and clothes.

_I'll grant you that he's definitely a real asshole. I'm not so sure about the idiot part. What'd he do?_

_He's trying to win a bet. That's why he did this. I'm going to light him on fire and piss on the corpse._

Lancia laughed, startled, _I think you've been spending too much time with Ken. That's a Ken threat if ever I heard one._

_It is, _Mukuro admitted, _one of the fifteen he's issued in the last minute or so, but it's the one that I believe would be the most satisfying._

_Yeah, I'll give you that._ Lancia chuckled, glaring over at the door that was about a dozen feet away that felt like miles. _Damn, I feel like hell. If the Vindice do show up I'm not gonna be a hell of a lot of use at all. How close are you?_

_Close. I think. It's hard to tell, but close._

_Want me to come outside and wave my arms around like a crazy person?_

_So you can get yourself shot again? No, don't be ridiculous._

If he hadn't been looking at it, he probably wouldn't have seen the doorknob turn. He certainly wouldn't have heard it over the sound of the pounding rain. But seeing it didn't make it anything but inevitable. There wasn't anywhere to hide and nowhere he'd be able to get to without falling over besides. _Think I'm pretty much boned on that one, kid. Someone's here._

_I see that. You need to get out of there. Do I have to do everything for you?_

_There isn't…_

But, of course, Mukuro wasn't listening. Mukuro was just taking control of his body and he was striding quickly across the room to hide behind the door like he owned the joint. Every step was agony, but he could feel Mukuro shoring up his muscles and minimizing the pain with illusions as they moved so by the time they hit the wall that agony had eased to a dull ache. The door was thrust open and he watched patiently. The gun came first and then the hand holding it as the man stepped cautiously into the warehouse, his eyes trained on the blood trail he'd left when he'd first burst in.

Mukuro didn't waste time, lashing out fast and angry to smash his fist into the man's cheek, sending him tumbling across the concrete. He didn't wait around to see if the man was out, just ducked out the door, slamming it behind him and darting out into the street. The rain hadn't let up one fucking bit since he'd gone into the warehouse, if anything it had actually gotten heavier, and it stung where it hit his shoulder wound until Mukuro did something that kept the rain off it, he had no idea what. And then he was off and running, each step jolting his shoulder painfully, but it was tolerable enough.

_Think you can take it from here? We're about six blocks away. Two blocks this way and then a left and four more blocks, maybe less, by the time you'll get there. Black jeep, black top._

_Yeah, I got it. Thanks, kid._

_I'm just protecting my investment, you know._

_Yeah, yeah, ye-_

He didn't hear the gunshot at all, but he felt the bullet hit and the explosion of pain that tossed him back down into the black.

**-ooo-  
MUKURO**

Knowing that you were the cause of all the terrible things that happened in your life didn't make them any easier to deal with.

He was shaky when he found himself back in the backseat of the jeep, rolling slowly down the crowded road as Chikusa leaned forward to peer out the rain-drenched windshield. The wipers were barely making a dent in the flood of water flowing across it so everything beyond looked like a soft blur of vague shapes and dull colors.

Ken turned in his seat, glancing back at him with eyes wide with panic, "Mukuro?"

Of course, Ken would know. Ken always knew when he was afraid even if he had the good sense not to say anything about it most of the time.

"It's okay," he whispered, knowing Ken would hear it. "He'll be okay, I just need to…"

Lancia wasn't dead. He knew Lancia wasn't dead, but time was of the essence and if he was unconscious there was only one option and it wasn't a particularly good one.

He'd only used it three times. Once for practice, once to massacre the Cacciatore Famiglia and the last time when he'd used it when they'd eliminated the Vagare. And he _hated_ the way it made him feel. Hated the way it allowed him to possess anyone he'd marked, near or far as long as they still drew breath, the way he couldn't feel anything at all.

When he was using the bullet, there was no pain, no pleasure, nothing at all except the rage and the hate around which he'd built his life. He always felt so numb, so almost cold, as if the darkness that lurked at the core of him had swallowed him whole and clung to him like tar, stretched with him, allowed him to move, but it never truly released its hold on him.

**-ooo-  
THEN**  
THE GANG  
NORTHERN ITALY  
1999

**MUKURO**

He lay panting, curled in around himself on the floor of the clean, tidy room he'd had Lancia rent, tears falling across his cheeks, fingers digging painfully over the cheap carpet, over and over again so he could feel the burn against his skin. He'd been so lost in the joy of the slaughter, reveling in the satisfaction of causing so much pain, so much destruction to those bodies he possessed, unable to feel it, any of it or anything at all really, that he hadn't even realized they were in trouble. He wasn't even sure he would have cared if he had noticed, not in the moment, not while there were still vile people to kill. Nasty, cruel people who deserved every awful thing he visited upon them.

He was so… it was so…

A wretched, horrible noise, somewhere between a moan and a sob shook free of his chest as he turned his face into the carpet, felt the rough burn against his cheek. He knew his fingertips were bleeding, could feel the break of the skin as it ruptured against the rough fibers of the carpet and he just kept going, worrying the skin against that roughness over and over so that it split further, rubbed raw and spilling his blood across the carpet. He needed to feel more, anything, so long as it banished that wonderful, awful feeling of emptiness, that numbness where nothing hurt, where nothing could ever hurt him at all.

Only it did.

_It did._

Because it would _hurt _if he was gone, if _they_ were gone, it hurt now even though they weren't gone at all because Lancia had saved him, but instead just because they _could_ have been. It would hurt, because they were part of him. The best part, the only good part, and it was supposed to be the three of them against the world and he'd forgotten or he hadn't cared, because murdering those Mafioso had been more important in the moment. He could kill them without ever meaning to just by not caring, by not remembering to look out for them, protect them.

Another sob and then another and another until his chest aches and it isn't _enough_ because he can't cry hard enough or loud enough to satisfy this great, sucking monstrous grief that is consuming him because no matter how far they get from that basement, he couldn't change what he was. He wanted to be the boy, for them, to be someone they could trust, that would protect them and see them all three avenged upon the mafia that had created them, but also see them safe and happy. And he couldn't do that, couldn't be that. There was this great yawning black divide between what he wanted to be and what he was. Between the boy and the monster and he didn't know how to bridge it. To be the monster he needed to be, that he was, for their enemies, but also the boy who would care the way they needed, the way he wanted to, for them.

And even as he sobbed against that floor, bled on that cheap carpeting and despaired, he still longed for that feeling again all the more because then he wouldn't have to feel this way.

"I won't," he whispered, voice hoarse and rough from a combination of disuse and abuse. "I won't," he promised again, turning his face to look at the pistol that lay discarded startling close his face.

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
THE GANG  
MUMBAI  
2002

**MUKURO**

And he hadn't.

He'd been good. He'd been so good. He'd packed them up and put them in a box and locked them in a bank vault so he wouldn't be tempted. So that he'd never be tempted. And though he'd dreamt about that day sometimes, about how _good_ it had felt during, he'd never been too tempted by the idea of using them again to retrieve them. Not even when they broke out of Traditore the first time and had left for New York. He'd thought of how close he'd come to losing him, to losing them, and he'd left them to rot in that vault and been glad of it.

Then there was Esterneo and he'd needed to move them, because he knew it would be dangerous if they got ahold of them, if they were able to use them to make more, so he'd sent them to himself in Mumbai by courier. They'd arrived not terribly long after they'd reached the city themselves and he'd stuffed the box unopened into the back of his closet.

It wasn't until he was packing to leave, until he heard Ken slam into the apartment and the sound of him colliding with Chikusa, the way his sobs had echoed through the apartment that he'd gotten into his bag and ripped open the box and shoved the bag into his backpack. He couldn't protect them properly if he were so afraid of himself that he wasn't willing to use every means at his disposal.

Lancia wasn't dead, but he wouldn't be able to come back to them on his own either. It was time to even up the odds.

And he was afraid. Of himself, of how much he wanted oblivion in any form he could get it, but he was more scared of what would happen, of what he would lose, if he didn't act.

"Take care of yourselves, whatever happens. I'm trusting you to keep us all alive while I take care of Lancia." He commented, digging the little red bag out of his backpack.

Ken nodded, his nails digging in and ripping through the leather where he gripped the seat. "Yeah, yeah, we can do that. You sure about this?"

Mukuro chuckled, shrugging his shoulders, and he knew it sounded a little unhinged, but that's how he felt, like a broken screen door banging in the wind. "No, I'm really not, but it's the only way we all make it out of here together."

"Okay," Ken murmured as he took the earplugs Mukuro dug from the bag and handed over. He shoved one in Chikusa's ear, infinitely careful not to prick him with his nails, Mukuro leaned forward and slid the other plug into place in Chikusa's far ear as Ken shoved is own earplugs home and then took out his cartridge and shoved his palms over his ears as well. They'd dealt with enough close quarters gunfire over the years that they all knew what it took to avoid problems and prepared accordingly.

His own earplugs already in place, Mukuro fumbled open the hard plastic case and removed a bullet from its foam packaging. There were eight left and it felt like both too many and too few. He loaded the bullet into the revolver, slapped the cylinder shut and pulled back the hammer with fingers that trembled. He put the barrel against his temple, glancing up to meet Chikusa's steady gaze in the rearview mirror as he inhaled and then turning his eyes to Ken who mouthed words slowly and deliberately to him.

He pulled the trigger with those words echoing in his mind as surely as if they'd been spoken aloud.

_Come home soon._

**-ooo-  
MUKURO/LANCIA**

…told you _not_ to shoot!" Iemitsu's voice was familiar and grating even over the heavy driving sound of the rain.

Mukuro groaned, his eyelids felt ridiculously heavy and he could tell there was something very wrong with his face. He was pretty sure his nose was actually broken. He was soaking wet and he could feel the driving rain pounding down across the back of him.

_…__it's like I was falling. Did someone fucking shoot me again? I'm getting pretty fucking tired of being shot…_

Mukuro smiled against the ground, spitting out the taste of blood and dirt, as he felt Lancia stirring, his thoughts running over what had happened to him, not yet realizing what had woken him or that he wasn't alone.

_You don't belong to them. You belong to us,_ he commented finally.

He felt Lancia realize he was there, felt the reluctant relief. _You always say the sweetest fucking things. Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy it when you talk about me like I'm a fucking coat? Damn, I feel like hell and… I can't fucking move. Why can't I… dammit… did you use that fucking bullet?_

_You were unconscious. The only reason you're awake is that I made you wake up._

_Right. Fuck. Absolutely everything fucking hurts. Any idea where those fuckers shot me this time?_

_I wouldn't know, _Mukuro replied, sounding positively fucking giddy and that was just the creepiest fucking thing ever. _I can't feel a thing. Now hurry back to sleep. You're not going to want to be around for this next part. It's really going to hurt._

"What do you mean you didn't do it? If you didn't shoot him than who did? It's not like bullets are just naturally occurring like fucking trees or bananas. They don't just fall out of the damn sky, you know. Well, do you see another sniper hanging around up there?" Iemitsu grouched, fussing with his umbrella as he yelled at someone over the phone.

"Please hold still, I shall endeavor to make this as painless as possible," a boy's voice murmured, close by, hovering over him and he could feel the pressure of fingers against his back, possibly applying a bandage or something of that nature. He groaned again and smirked as the boy apologized and the pressure eased. A whisper of sound lured the boy into leaning closer, asking if he'd said something until he was close enough that Mukuro was able to backhand him hard enough to break his nose or knock him out, hopefully both if he was lucky. The boy fell backwards as he shoved Lancia's body to his feet, stumbling and swaying.

The body had sustained quite a bit of damage and lost, as Lancia would say, a metric fuck-ton of blood. Even though he couldn't feel the pain of it, he knew this body was close to the limits of what it could stand and continue to function. All the work he'd done earlier was still in place so it wasn't too difficult to add a few more illusions to shore up the new injury, a bullet that had punched through his chest, unnervingly close to his lung, and shattered a rib.

Iemitsu Sawada closed his phone and smiled, "Well, well, well. You're not Lancia, are you?"

"What makes you think that?"

"I'm pretty sure that man doesn't smile like that," Sawada answered easily, slipping his phone back in his jacket pocket. "Possession bullet?"

"Go fuck yourself," Mukuro replied, using the realm of beasts to summon a dozen vipers. They slid towards Iemitsu from under stalls and dropped down on from the balcony above.

As the vipers struck he was already turning and dashing away down the long alley through the deepening puddles, weaving wildly. He hit the end of the alley and kept going, running flat-out on legs that felt like they had all the integrity of wet noodles. One block and then two and three passed as he dodged down streets and ducking through alleys towards the call of his body and then he was running out on the main road towards the brake lights of a black jeep. He pitched Lancia's body through the illusion he'd created, tumbling into the backseat and crashing into his own limp form headfirst. Ken scrambled to help him pull Lancia's legs into the jeep, folding him uncomfortably into the seat.

As soon as Lancia was in the seat, he allowed himself to withdraw back to his own body. There was a moment of vertigo and then he was back and staring into Ken's smiling face.

**-ooo-  
IEMITSU**

"Well, _that_ was embarrassing," Iemitsu commented, dropping the last dead snake into the road and reaching down to help Basil to his feet. "How's the nose?"

"Twas not shattered by the blow," Basil replied, holding a bloody handkerchief to his nose with one hand as he took Iemitsu's offered hand with the other. "Though it pricks me in both pain and pride to have been so easily caught unawares."

"Don't worry, I'm sure we'll get to pay them back in spades eventually," Iemitsu replied easily, "They don't seem like the type to forgive and forget and when they end up in jail they're going to be awfully pissed at us for it."

"Thou dost not believe they will escape?"

Iemitsu snorted, "Not a chance in hell. Even if they make it out of Mumbai, the Vindice have their scent now, they'll catch up to them soon enough. On the up side, I learned a few interesting things so it was definitely worth the trip. Call everybody and tell them they can pack it in, but I want everybody to keep their eyes open for any weirdness. I want to know who fired that last shot, but we also need to be out of here before the Vindice think to come asking questions."

"Thou dost not intend to inform the Vindice about Mukuro Rokudou?"

"Nah, what would be the fun in that be?"

"Master?"

"Basil, the most important thing about being involved in an intelligence organization like ours is that you need know when to share information and when to keep that information to yourself. The second most important thing to know is that you never, ever share information with the Vindice unless you absolutely have to and never for free. And not _just_ because they're a bunch of creepy bastards."

**-ooo-  
MUKURO**

"You need to wake up. Please wake up," Ken's voice sounded so desperate. He opened his eyes a little, startled to find the world was painfully, painfully bright and the light seemed to burn his already overdone brain.

"What's going on? Where are we?" He asked groggily, pushing himself up. He had a terrible crick in his neck and Lancia's muddy booted foot was in his lap. He wasn't certain when he'd fallen asleep, but he obviously had.

"Coming up on that big fucking bridge, but there's a problem. A big fucking problem," Ken jerked a thumb over his shoulder and Mukuro pushed himself up gingerly to peer out the windshield at the black transport parked on the side of the road and the tall black figures who stood in the middle of the road, unnoticed and unremarked by the passing cars. The traffic was heavy and had slowed their escape to a crawl, there was little chance they'd be able to pass by unremarked unless he could fool them thoroughly.

And really, at this point, what did they have to lose by trying?

"Do not look at them. Whatever else you do, don't do that, just keep driving, okay?"

"Seriously?" Ken asked, soft and nervous.

"If you have a better idea, now would be the time."

**-ooo-  
KEN**

"Shit, shit, shit…" he murmured, tucking his feet up on his seat. He had faith in Mukuro, absolutely believed he could manage this, but being this close to the Vindice still freaked him the fuck out. He'd had nightmares about the suffocating feeling of that shackle around his neck for weeks after they'd arrived at Traditore. He could almost feel it now, tight around his throat and he wished he could hold Chikusa's hand or Mukuro's or Lancia's, instead he wound his fingers in Chikusa's shirt and held it tight in one hand as the other clutched compulsively around the wolf cartridge.

"We'll be fine," Chikusa whispered, his eyes focused straight ahead, his knuckles white where they gripped tight around the creaking leather of the steering wheel. "Just a little further."

**-ooo-  
MUKURO**

He would swear he could almost feel them probing at the reality he had created and he knew it was holding, but it felt like a close thing.

They crept past them at a snail's pace, feet instead of miles and he felt the strain of every moment as if it were an hour. He knew he was sweating, knew Lancia was groaning beside him because it was difficult to focus on keeping all those illusions in place when he needed to fool three Vindice. Then they were on the bridge and he felt them picking up speed as they swept out onto the Bandra-Worli Sea Link towards the western suburbs, away from the Vindice and the small fleet of illusionists they'd brought with them. Once they were halfway across, Mukuro released a shaky breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "We're clear, for now anyway."

Ken looked back at him, grinning widely, "You did great."

Mukuro nodded, leaning back against the seat. "I'll sleep now. Wake me when it's time to switch cars."

**-ooo-  
KEN**

In the end, they made it out of Mumbai, but they didn't make it out of India. The Vindice were relentless and seemed to have some way of tracking them that they didn't understand because time after time, city after city, they would find the Vindice in the road before them as if they'd driven only blocks instead of miles.

By the time they were halfway to New Delhi, Mukuro was dripping sweat, curled up in the seat and already pushed far past his limits. They'd switched to a big white car outside of Mumbai and Mukuro had taken the front seat so he could see the Vindice sooner and so Ken could get Lancia laid out in the back and see to his injuries. And those were bad, really bad, and worse once Mukuro had exhausted himself to the point that he could no longer use illusions to do more than slow the bleeding.

Ken had always known he was awful at patching others up, but he'd never felt more completely fucking useless at it then he did kneeling in the back of that jeep ripping t-shirts to shreds and ties them together to make bandages. He thought it done an okay job until he realized that Mukuro was still handling the worst of the three bullet wounds and Lancia was pale and getting paler. And he could feel the memory that Mukuro had blocked, shivering at the back of his mind until it finally broke free as he heard Mukuro whimper and tears flooded his vision as he gripped Lancia's hand, digging his fingers in. It hurt, it hurt because Lancia was hurt and he might die and they wouldn't be able to stop it and it would be because of him.

"Sorry," he mumbled, shoving the pain down, down, down, because Mukuro was talking to him, to them.

"I'm pretty much done. I won't be able to fool them again."

"Shit," Ken murmured, unable to figure out anything else to say.

"What now?" Chikusa commented, sounding for all the world as if they were talking about what they were going to do for dinner. That was one of his favorite things about Chikusa; they could all be scared shitless and Chikusa would still sound like he was ordering takeout.

"We need to ditch the bullets and Ken's extra cartridges," Mukuro replied, clearing his throat and gesturing vaguely to the back of the car. "Consolidate the bags. Pull over in Vadodara. I'll give you an address to ship the bag to. Just the important stuff, okay?"

"Sure," Ken murmured opening up the bags and pulling stuff out onto the seat beside. In one bag he put the bullets, his extra cartridges, Chikusa's spare hats, his old hairpins, the gun and a few other odds and ends. His fingers paused on the picture and he wondered where it had come from, why it was there, but he didn't ask. He shoved that in the keeper bag too.

"So, what do we do after? Once we get rid of our stuff?" Ken asked, leaning up over the front seat between them. "Do we just pull over and wait? Keep driving and hope for the fucking best?"

"Let's just keep driving," Mukuro smiled tiredly at them. "They're probably expecting a fight. It would be a shame to disappoint them."

"You know you look like you'd lose a fight with a wet paper bag right now, right?" Ken volunteered, dodging backwards and laughing as Mukuro took a half-hearted swat at him.

He was scared. He was really fucking scared. Of the Vindice, those total fucking nightmares, of going back to prison again, of how pale Lancia was and how sickly Mukuro looked, but… but at least they were all together.

At least if they had to go down, they'd go down together.

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
VONGOLA  
NAMIMORI  
2002

**TSUNAYOSHI**

One warm summer night, Sawada Tsunayoshi dreamed about a place that was hot and dry.

There was a boy sitting behind him, pressed against his back. He couldn't see him or hear him, but he knew he was there. He could feel him, a solid, bracing presence just pressed up against him and he couldn't tell if he were holding him up or vice versa. For a long time, they sat there in silence as the desert sand blew up and around them, caught up in an incoming storm, and thunder rumbled in the distance. There was something about the boy at his back that seemed wounded, wild and hurt, and he wanted to help. Just like he always kind of wanted to help even though he wasn't very good at it.

He'd never been much use to anyone and even now, after months of training with Reborn, he still didn't feel any different from the boy he'd been before Reborn had shown up at his door. He had friends now, kind of, but he knew deep down that he hadn't really earned them. Not yet anyway. Though he was a little afraid that he couldn't really do anything for them except get them tangled up in this mafia mess, but even so he also couldn't bring himself to let them go or send them away either.

He liked Yamamoto, who didn't make him feel so stupid like most everybody else did, whether they intended to or not. He liked the way he smiled and put a hand on his shoulder and invited him to play during sport days even though he knew he wasn't any good at all.

He liked Gokudera too, even though Gokudera kind of freaked him out with all that boss this and boss that stuff. Sure, he got angry easily and he was really violent and he smoked way, way, way too much, but he was also kind of nice and could be really thoughtful when he wanted to be.

He even liked Haru for all that she was kind of _really_ weird. He didn't like Bianchi, of course, because she was just the scariest human being imaginable, and Lambo was just really annoying (the 10-year-later version wasn't as bad, he guessed, though he still had trouble getting his head around that because it was kind of just the weirdest thing ever). And, of course, there was Kyouko who actually talked to him now and had been over to his house that one time and, sure, she probably thought he was massive freak and had absolutely no interest in him in the romance department, but… she still knew he existed and she was nice to him and that was a possibly the greatest thing ever.

Still, none of them actually needed him, really, and he'd never been able to do much of anything for them that Reborn hadn't incited him to do with those dying will bullets (which was embarrassing in a lot of ways, really). Whenever he tried to help them out on his own, he usually failed at it or said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing. He still wasn't any good at having friends. He guessed it was probably because it was all still pretty new, but it was probably also because he just kind of sucked at it. And he still had trouble trying when he was so afraid of failing miserably because friends weren't like math. If he failed math, he could try again, he was pretty sure it didn't work like that with friends. Still, he couldn't deny that it was fun sometimes even if it was rough and scary and it freaked him out.

This didn't feel like that.

There was definitely something weird and strange and dangerous about the boy at his back, but… that didn't feel like a terrible thing. He'd always understood weird. And he thought he knew a little bit about strange and dangerous things nowadays too. He was pretty sure nothing was stranger or more dangerous than a toddler who was both a hitman and a tutor, after all. The boy wasn't much taller than him, so he figured they were probably the same age or nearly and he wondered, vaguely, if this boy was lonely like he had been before. Like how he still was sometimes despite his new friends and the odd busy way his life was now. He seemed kind of lonely. And, even if he wasn't, it still felt like maybe he needed something. Like maybe they both needed something from each other.

It was just a dream, of course, but... it felt different than most of his dreams did. Most of his dreams were silly or scary and an alarming number of them featured Lambo stealing things or Reborn shooting him or both these days. This dream was different than the usual, nicer, almost peaceful, and so he decided to just go with it. That it would probably be fine to just be himself and do what he wanted to do.

Probably.

And that was why, after several moments or hours of sitting back to back with the wind whipping the world into a frenzy around them, he reached back and found the boy's hand and tangled their fingers together. And for a moment, the presence at his back stiffened, drawing taunt and angry and Tsunayoshi wondered if he'd made the wrong choice after all. If he'd screwed up and just done what he wanted to do and it was the wrong thing. So, he froze, tense and waiting for rejection because that's what happened when he reached out himself. That's what always, always happened. When Reborn made him reach out or someone reached out to him things went okay, but whenever he made the effort… it had never turned out well at all. He was just… no good at it.

Unsure of what else to do, he just sat there still as he could with those slim, cool, unseen fingers tangled between his own. He closed his eyes against the oncoming storm since the sand had begun to pelt them hard enough to sting a little and waited for the inevitable.

He thought he heard the boy speak, but the words were lost in the wind gusting around them. But there was something dark and sinister there, had been from the beginning, a feeling that swarmed around him and made him shiver even though the wind that blew over and around them and ruffled his hair wasn't even a little chill. Like a shadow passing over the sun. Something ominous and strange and he tightened his hold on the boy's fingers and he felt, he thought, that the boy's fingers squeezed his in return. It was only for a moment, but it felt like acceptance and it warmed him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

And then he was woke up to find himself sitting alone in his bedroom with his back pressed against the wall, having nodded off with his history textbook open in his lap. The dream faded and leaving behind only a vague sense of foreboding and a palm that seemed chillier than it should be, the details already fading around the edges.

He tossed the textbook down on the floor beside his bed, it wasn't as if the studying would help anyway, it never usually did even with Reborn standing over him ready to blow him up if he got an answer wrong. He yawned and stretched, blinking tired over at where the tutor was sleeping in his hammock, just visible to the blue light of early morning. He must have turned off the lamp, because Tsuna knew it had been on when he'd drifted off. Yawning again he burrowed under his blankets and buried his head under his pillow to avoid the first rays of sunlight that would inevitably be filtering into through the window any moment.

He fell back asleep in moments and when he woke a few hours later, he remembered that he'd had a strange dream and that it had been really a lot nicer than his usual dreams, even if he couldn't remember much about it except a warm feeling that made him feel a little better whenever he thought about it.

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
THE GANG  
ENROUTE TO ITALY  
2002

**MUKURO**

He slept, often and fitful, alone in his cell in the transport as it rattled down the road. Everything was too cold and he floated in and out of sleep, in and out of his body, in and out of reality. Worry for his companions constantly warring with a desire to smash Iemitsu Sawada and his organization into so much paste for putting them in this position in the first place. To make them pay in blood and pain for what they'd done.

His dreams, when they came were swamps of darkness and pain and the screams of his companions and the screams of his enemies blending together in a hopeless sea of fear and despair and rage. Nothing made sense and everything hurt.

More often he tumbled through the dreams of others, topsy-turvy and hopelessly random. His control, which had been tentative at best even those last days in India, decimated anew by the overuse of his powers as they attempted to escape the Vindice. He recognized some of the dreamers, people he'd possessed or people who were compatible, Ken and Chikusa and Lancia on occasion as they drifted in and out of sleep themselves, but most were just strangers. Most were people he had never met, would probably never meet.

In the midst of all this, on a plane out of Mumbai, he thought he dreamt of a boy. A boy with a presence like a warm light at the edge of the world, holding at bay the darkness he could feel licking at the edges of the dream. He wasn't sure how he knew it was a boy, because he couldn't see him or hear him, but he was certain of it nonetheless. There was a storm blowing up around them and they sat in the middle of the desert, out in the open like fools, and sand stung his eyes and skin as it was flung against them relentlessly. It seemed foolish to stay here, as if the dream itself was hostile and he supposed that was probably true. The dreams of strangers were often no more accepting of his presence than the dreams of his victims or the victims themselves. But it wasn't as if he'd chosen to wander into this dream, wasn't sure he was even in any fit state to turn himself out of it either, though he was more coherent now then he'd been in a while. He'd probably just have to wait for the boy to wake up and shatter the dreamscape himself. He doubted he'd have long to wait, this wasn't exactly the sort of dream people longed to preserve, all burning sunlight and stinging sand. Still, if he had to wait, this was a reasonably pleasant place to do it. The boy's presence was unexpected and his weight against his back was… oddly reassuring in a way few enough things in his life were.

Strange.

The boy at his back remained a steady presence for long moments and then he felt warm fingers creep over his wrist and down over the back of his hand to catch and grip his own and he froze because that grip was… foolish and unwanted. Those fingers against his were warm and rough and gentle and he wanted to curse at their owner. Wanted to rip his hand away before he could get used to this grip because it… it wasn't terrible. It felt like longing and there was an aching loneliness in the way the body pressed against his back tensed as if rejection were a given rather than a question.

He had told Lancia, months ago as he recovered from that terrible fever, that he didn't know how to be kind. And that had been true, in the beginning, but it was also true that people changed and grew and became the things they loved and feared and hated the most in some ways if not in all. He understood that. He'd lived hundreds of lives since he'd met Lancia, lives like mayflies, brief and often unremarkable. He'd been cruel men and kind women, evil women who lacked even the faintest trace of empathy and men who were generous and hard-working, he'd been children of a thousand different temperaments and once, as an experiment, he'd even been a cat.

That had been a strange and uncomfortable experience he never intended to repeat.

He'd been Ken, who was all energy and instinct and bravado and burned so bright it seemed like the fire of his life might consume them all and burn them to ash.

He'd been Chikusa, who was steady and methodical and fervently devoted to them beyond measure and reason willing to do anything if it meant keeping them safe.

And he'd been Lancia, who was strong and kind and who somehow managed to care about them when they'd given him every reason to hate and fear them.

He was the sum of all of these things, all of these lives, and none of them. He understood much better now what it was to be kind even if it were something that did not and never would come naturally to him. He was selfish and he was cruel and he was bloodthirsty, but… perhaps that wasn't quite all he was anymore. He'd been Mukuro Rokudo for six years and, maybe, that was long enough to become something more than what he'd been born to be.

This boy was a stranger and it was easier to accept kindness and to be kind to strangers. So, he ignored the greedy, grasping darkness inside him that demanded that he squash this light before it destroyed him. Because he didn't quite hate the way those warm fingers tightened around his own or the way that warmth at his back felt like sunshine breaking through clouds on a stormy day. Temporary and fragile and he was fairly certain that when this dream shattered, as it inevitably would, he would never feel it again. He might not be able to reach out, might never be able to reach out, but he could do this much at least.

"It's not because I like you, you understand, just… it's been a long day." And it had been. It had been a long and terrible day and they were heading back to prison and Lancia was… hurt, so badly injured that he hadn't done more than groan when the Vindice had slapped that shackle around his throat. Ken and Chikusa weren't in great shape either, both injured in the brief and hopeless fight before the Vindice had swatted them all down as if they were nothing more dangerous then children's toys.

And he wanted to kill Iemitsu Sawada for what he had done. For calling the wrath of the Vindice down on them over a wager, for almost killing Lancia just to answer a stupid question. He remembered falling asleep wanting that. Wanting to make him suffer and scream and wanting to destroy everything he loved. If, in fact, people like Iemitsu Sawada did indeed love anything at all. But just now… just now he was tired, so very tired, and everything hurt and being next to this boy helped a little. "My whole life sometimes feels like one very long, very bad day," he confessed, even though he knew quite well that that bad day was often of his own making.

And that boy's fingers tightened around his as if he could hear his words or at least feel the sentiment and he smiled, closing his eyes against the sting of sand. On impulse, he squeezed those fingers in return and that warmth blazed so painfully bright and hot against him that a part of him, the tiny traitorous part that yearned for such things, would probably spend a lifetime longing to feel it again.

And then the dream shattered around him and was lost.

He fell into another dream and another after that none of which were so peaceful or pleasant, but he endured them by finding a dark corner to hide in so he could wait it out with the memory of that blazing warmth wrapped around him to stave off the cold.

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
(FORMER) GAZZA  
TRADITORE  
August 13, 2002

**M.M**

The funny thing about high-security mafia prisons was that they didn't actually get new inmates very often. Generally, the population stayed pretty much the same from month to month and so when they did get a new addition it was a major event that completely changed up the dynamics of the place. People who were playing cards and joking the day before were suddenly at each other's throats, everyone jockeying for position because you never knew what was going to be coming in through those doors. The only surety was that whoever they were, they would shake up the power structure. They'd come in and kick the anthill as hard as they could, scattering everyone and sending them scrambling for new alliances. You didn't come in with friends. There were no families here, not really. Places like Traditore were made up of people who'd abandoned their Famiglia or murdered them or burned every bridge they'd ever known. No, there were no easy allies in Traditore, just truces and allegiances that lasted only until something better came along, fragile and breakable as china.

So, when those three came in together there was quite a bit of fuss. Though not nearly as much fuss as there was when, two minutes after they arrived, a guard took a baton to one of them for mouthing off and the smallest of the group, a boy with strange deep blue hair, turned on the guard and ripped his throat out so fast that she didn't even see him move. One moment he was just standing there, his weird mismatched eyes narrowed and the next he was standing over the guard, his hands stained red, his shirt and face splattered with the guard's blood as the man lay choking and gasping and dying on the floor beneath him, clawing uselessly at his ruined throat.

Then he'd smiled, smiled and folded his hands neatly behind his head and his friends had stepped well away from him as one as guards came flooding into the room to subdue him and haul him away. They'd take him to down to Solitary if she didn't miss her guess. They always did with the troublesome ones, the dangerous ones, because there were some people in the mafia who had gifts that couldn't be so easily restrained. Weapons that couldn't be easily taken from them, people to whom a prison like Traditore was little more than a way station on the way to either Vendicare, escape or the execution chamber.

She couldn't help but notice that the two he'd come in with didn't look particularly surprised or worried by this turn of events.

As it turned out, the new boys were also her very first roommates. She'd been in a cell by herself since she'd arrived here the previous year on virtue of her age and being the only girl currently in residence on this block. Apparently the powers that be had decided that the boys were close enough to her own age that she no longer rated the private suite.

She hadn't decided yet whether she hated that fact or she was glad of it. On one hand, it wasn't a bad thing to have the company and her stock had risen considerably by sheer proximity since the boys had created such a stir when they were brought in. They were polite enough and kept themselves to themselves. It helped that they were so clearly, obviously, completely gone on each other.

On the down side, the loud blond kid snored so loudly it was like trying to sleep in a garage with the world's worst death metal band playing Metallica cover music with a chainsaw accompaniment. Just the worst sound imaginable really. She was sure she'd manage to get used to it eventually, as she'd discovered in her short life that one could get used to just about anything if one was so minded, but the first night had been a very special experience. And now there was… whatever the hell this was.

"I can't do this, I can't, I…" the blond kid shook his head violently, staring at the shower stalls like they were going to eat him. He'd been virtually chanting the word 'no' since they'd been ushered into the room and left to their own devices by their escort.

The dark-haired boy nodded like this made perfect sense and then said, not unkindly. "Do you want me to knock you out?"

"I-maybe-I don't know, Chikusa, I… I…"

"I can go in with you?"

"No!"

The dark-haired boy flinches, it's subtle but there, as if the blond kid had slapped him. "Sorry."

"No, not… god, Chikusa, no, I'm sorry, I'm…" he leans forward burying his face against the other's- Chikusa's- shoulder. "I-I'll do it. It's…"

M.M. sighed heavily, pursing her lips and glancing back at the door. Shower time was only about twenty minutes and they'd all already wasted five of that standing around. "Look, boys, I don't know what the hell is happening here, but I need to get in there and shower. So do you. If you aren't decently clean when they come back in here they'll force you under. Then they'll punish us all for violating the rules. They're a real bunch of assholes that way." She noticed the way the blond kid shuddered at that and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was afraid of water or showers or both.

"What the hell do they care? Isn't it my fucking problem if I don't wanna shower?"

"You'd think so, huh? Apparently they have rules about general cleanliness for the benefit of all or some bullshit. Gotta love the mafia, right? Kill each and it's all good, no problem at all, but you stink up the joint and they've got a problem with you. Total twats," M.M. shrugged, rolling her eyes. "Regardless, it is what it is. So, we're in this together as much as I'd rather just ignore whatever this is and go on with my business. What do you need to get this done so we don't all get penalized?"

Chikusa was immediately all business, "He usually takes baths or uses the sink."

"Hey, don't just go telling people that!" The blond one yelped, his entire face flushing bright red.

Chikusa shrugged, "She's right. We either figure it out or they figure it out for you."

"Okay, so it's showers that are the problem. Share a towel, use the other to soak up water and use that to clean yourself up. You'll probably have to help him, but you should be able to figure it out if you're quick about it. You'd better get moving though, we've wasted a lot of time talking."

"We'll make it work," Chikusa murmured, already steering Ken down the row to one of the rear shower stalls with a nod. M.M. rolled her eyes and left them to it, stripping off her clothes and folding them up on the bench before grabbing her soap basket and ducking into the nearest stall. As usual the water was unpleasantly cold and she grinned as she heard an undignified squawk from the blond boy and the slap of a wet towel on skin that indicated he'd just found that out as well.

By some miracle the boys managed to finish showering, but were still getting dried off and dressed by the time the guard showed back up.

"Time's up! You'll have to get dressed back in your cell."

M.M. clicked her tongue, stepping between the boys and guard, "Oh, give them a break, Henri. It's their first time and they just don't have a good sense of time management yet. I was just as bad the first week."

"Yeah, I seem to remember you also spent some time in the box for it too."

"Well, to be honest, I think that probably had more to do with punching Costa in the dick for being a sleaze and ogling my tits while I was finishing getting dressed," she replied, smiling sweetly. "As long as you aren't gonna stare at their dicks while they get some clothes on, I think we can probably avoid such ugliness."

Henri sighed, rubbing the back of his neck and scowling, "C'mon, M, you know that rules are rules."

"I also know that you sometimes let Old Man De Luca have an extra ten when his arthritis is acting up, so don't give me that 'rules are rules' bullshit. It won't kill you to give them a break this one time. It's not like they're going to make a habit of it, are you, boys?"

"Fuck no," the blond replied, arriving to stand next to her, still shaking water out of his hair like a dog. She noticed he had a little wolf face tattoo on his cheek. It was a little weird, but kind of cute too. Totally out of place in a place like Traditore though.

"Gross," she grumbled, glaring at him and wiping water droplets off her face. "Mutt."

The boy grinned, bumping her shoulder lightly as Chikusa fell into step with them and the guard led them out of the showers. "Thanks."

"Yeah, yeah, don't make a habit of it, I'm not such a nice person that I'll always help you out for free, you know."

**-ooo-**  
August 23  
**KEN**

He hated fucking prison. He was completely done and over being locked in prisons. It made him restless and itchy and twitchy and it was hard to focus on anything at all when he couldn't get out, couldn't stretch his legs and run and jump and do all the many, many, many things you couldn't do locked in a series of nasty rooms in a place that reminded him far too much of the underground labs. Everything smelled the same too, like bleach and blood and shit and too many people sweating and burping and farting and generally just being people in too small a space. He fucking hated it. He was going to go completely crazy if he had to stay here much longer like this. And they'd barely been there a fucking week.

"Okay?" Chikusa murmured, his hand a firm and distracting pressure against his back.

And that wasn't getting any easier either. Nothing about that was getting easier and it was tough to be close to him, to be touched by him and not want more than that. More than just closeness and friendship and a hand to steady him and guide him back from the edge. And wearing the cartridge constantly again was making it worse, it hadn't been like this the last time and maybe the difference was he hadn't been this… this startlingly _aware _of Chikusa before; of what he wanted from him, with him. Whatever it was he didn't like it when anyone got too near Chikusa, especially in here, it made him edgy and irritable. And he wanted to be close to him all the time, which wasn't exactly new since it'd been this way since they were kids. He would live his entire life touching or leaning against Chikusa if he thought he could get away with it. He always felt safer if Chikusa was close by, but it felt a little different now. Now it was less a want and more like an itch under his skin that he couldn't quite scratch.

"Yeah, yeah, just… I wouldn't mind some yard time, you know? I'm just feeling a little…" he shrugged helplessly, but he knew Chikusa would understand what he meant. Chikusa always understood.

"Just two more hours. We can jog around in here if you want, but you should eat first."

"Okay, Mom, anything else I should do? Brush my teeth? Clean my room?"

Chikusa's eyes narrowed, "Cranky."

"I'm not cranky, I'm just…" Again there was no good way to explain it when they were in this room surrounded by strangers. Besides words and explanations were Mukuro's thing and Mukuro wasn't here and that was his fault. If he'd kept his mouth shut that guard wouldn't have hit him and Mukuro wouldn't have killed him and… things were always easier, better, when Mukuro was around.

It had been tough enough the first go around in Traditore when it was just the two of them with Lancia hanging on looking a little at a loss whenever Mukuro had gone all radio silent on them. It was worse now without Lancia there with them. Worse having to worry about how he was doing on top of not having heard from Mukuro. It had been eight days. Eight whole fucking days and he hadn't felt the tickle of Mukuro's presence in the back of his mind or seen the flash of red in some guard's eye or the wry smile curving Chikusa's lips and that was making him a little nuts too. The only time Mukuro was ever out of touch for that long was when it was something bad. And if something bad had happened then that was his fault too.

"Not your fault," Chikusa commented, taking a seat on the bench beside him and leaning back against the table. "Mukuro makes his own choices."

Sometimes it shocked the hell out of him that Chikusa didn't know how he felt, how he thought about him, when he seemed to know every other damn stray thought flitting around in his brain. "Yeah, I know, he was always going to do something to end up in Solitary, probably, but… it wasn't supposed to be like this."

Chikusa sighed, glancing down and away, "…it was my fault."

"Eh? What?"

"He stopped me."

Ken frowned, confused by the comment and Chikusa shrugged helplessly, fingering one of the needles under his skin restlessly and he suddenly understood. He remembered all those years ago, in the basement of Esterneo, Chikusa killing that girl because she'd accidently shot him. Mukuro hadn't stopped him then. Maybe because he'd been exhausted and still recovering, maybe because he'd been as surprised as Ken had been, maybe because he just hadn't cared if Chikusa killed some girl he didn't know or give a shit about. He could think of a dozen times since then when Chikusa had killed or maimed the people who hurt him without hesitation, almost like instinct. And he hadn't even realized. Had never thought a thing about it because he was fucking asshole. A self-centered fucking asshole and he hadn't even fucking realized that Chikusa killed anyone who hurt him if he could.

So, of fucking course, he hadn't thought about Chikusa killing the guard. And he could have. Easily. Chikusa had started wearing those needles beneath his skin during their time in India so he'd had them on him when they were captured, still did.

He was so stupid.

So, so fucking _stupid_.

Panic rose up into his throat to choke him as the bottom fell out of his stomach. It could just as easily been Chikusa who was taken to solitary, locked away from him for days or weeks or months or however long it took them to escape.

"…Oh." He said aloud and it sounded soft and shaky and nothing like how he felt. How relieved he was that it was Mukuro in that cell downstairs and not Chikusa and how that made him feel the worst fucking person in the universe, because even if he hadn't realized any of this shit soon enough to do anything about it, Mukuro had. He knew Mukuro would be able to manage that he'd be able to navigate whatever was happening downstairs and he'd come back to them same as he always had. But it made him want to fucking cry or scream or hit something that Mukuro knew him, knew them, well enough to do this for them.

Even while Mukuro always tried to pretend he didn't care at all. Pretended he wasn't scared even though he had to know that Ken could smell the fear on him.

"Sorry."

"Nah, it's…" It means everything, you mean everything, you're perfect and I think I…. "It's cool. I mean, I'd have done the same thing if it had been you, you know, probably."

Chikusa's smile was small and brief and pained, but he nudged him with his shoulder. "You need to eat."

"Yeah, I know. Wanna go grab something?"

"Okay," Chikusa replied, pushing himself to his feet and wrapping his fingers around Ken's hand, tugging him in the direction of the kitchen counter.

**-ooo-**  
August 24  
**CHIKUSA**

It was his fault. He felt out of control, as if he were falling, just spiraling and he didn't know how to stop it. If he were honest with himself, it had been like this for months, since New York, but it had only gotten worse since they'd been forced to flee Mumbai. All he'd been able to think of, all he'd been able to focus on was how he kept failing them. He couldn't keep them safe, any of them, and he couldn't even control himself. He'd known what would happen if he attacked that guard, he'd known, but he hadn't been thinking about that and… he probably would have done it anyway even he was. It had been reflex, as natural as breathing, it always had been. He valued nothing the way he valued Ken. He cared for nothing the way he cared for Ken and anything that threatened that… threatened him… had to go.

He'd known that girl. He hadn't known her name, but he'd known her. They'd slept in the same room, shared the same sad, sorry food and the moment he'd heard Ken cry out, he'd killed her without a thought, without hesitation and he'd never regretted it. Still didn't regret it. Ken was alive and she was dead and he cared about nothing besides that. Again and again over the years, he made a point of destroying anything that hurt him. The only exception had been that guard at Traditore and he had lived only because Mukuro had forbidden it, had promised to kill him later, to share the memory so that he could watch and see it done himself. It had taken that man four hours, fifty-three minutes and twelve seconds to die.

He knew he had a problem.

He understood there was something wrong with him.

Mukuro knew too, but he wasn't the sort to judge. All he ever said about it was that he should talk to Ken, but he never had. There had never seemed a right time and then they were here and… he honestly wasn't even sure what Ken had said. All he had seen was red when the guard had hit him and then Mukuro's dark hair stepping in front of him as he ripped the guard's throat out for them. If his reflexes had been even the slightest bit slower, he would have driven his needle into the back of Mukuro's neck. He didn't deserve that kind of trust. He was a coward and a fool and he didn't deserve Mukuro's trust or Ken's affection.

He'd tried to talk to Ken about it only when he had to and even then he hadn't done it properly. He hadn't told him anything properly, he'd just said that it was his fault and let Ken draw his own conclusions and he knew they were the wrong ones. He knew Ken was blaming himself again for things that weren't his fault. Weren't anyone's fault but his own and he'd felt Ken pulling away from him. Putting distance between them over and over again since then and he knew it was his fault and he knew he deserved it. And he…

If he'd just been able to reign himself in, if he'd just been able to control himself then this wouldn't have happened and Mukuro would still be there with them. He had messed everything up and he knew that. He'd felt it in the tired resignation of Mukuro's gaze as he was hauled off the floor and out to solitary in the soft, shivery brush of his mind that asked him to look after Ken, to make sure they both stayed alive and safe. And he'd been drowning in the guilt of that, sliding deeper and deeper as each day passed with no word from Mukuro. Something bad had to have happened, something bad and it was his fault.

"_Stop it,_ I can fucking hear you turning yourself inside out about it, Kappa. It isn't your fault." The top of Ken's head popped over the edge of the bunk, just from the nose up, because the bunks were tall and Ken was short and so even when he stood on his bunk and peered over the side of Chikusa's bed that's all he could ever see of him.

"Sorry," Chikusa murmured, pointedly not promising to stop it. Ken must have noticed because he clamored up over the side of the bed. Chikusa scooted back a little and pulled back the blankets to make room for him. In the days they'd been here, Ken had been in his bed often enough that he knew if he didn't move the blankets Ken would just flop all over him or just lay next to him and weigh the blankets down so they held him in place pinned beneath them too tightly to be comfortable. Ken was a lot heavier than was standard for his size- probably courtesy of all that Esterneo had done to him- layers of muscle that made his slim limbs solid and sturdy in a way Chikusa's were not. Chikusa might be taller, conventionally bigger, but he couldn't actually lift Ken if it came down to it. Still, he didn't mind the weight when it was pressed down against him, maybe even enjoyed the way it anchored him, the way he couldn't easily slip away when Ken was sprawled across him, heavy and warm. He didn't like it as well when it was the blankets that were trapping him in place.

Ken slid into the bed beside him and Chikusa flipped the blankets back up over them both. Ken squirmed around beside him, getting comfortable, the mattresses on the prison bunks were slim and thin and lumpy and unfortunate. The floors would have been preferable, but they'd tried that the first night and almost gotten a trip to something called 'the box' for their trouble.

Ken's knees knocked against his and he shifted to accommodate them, shivering a little at the way Ken's bare foot grazed his ankle. He thought, sometimes, when he allowed himself to think of it, which wasn't often, that he liked the way Ken touched him a lot more than he should. He made it a point not to touch people if he could avoid it and so, perhaps, he was just oversensitive, but even when Mukuro or Lancia touched him he wasn't as… sensitive to it as he was when it was Ken. When Ken's warm toes slid across his calf or across the arch of his foot it shot through him like wildfire, burning across every nerve in its wake. Sometimes it was too much, more often not enough. Always it felt as if all it would take was the drag of Ken's callused fingers across his skin and he would finally understand that question that had lingered half-formed between them for months.

As it was, Ken's knee slipped between his own and he gave into the urge to rest his hand over his hip, strangely satisfied by the hiss of Ken's breath at the touch. At the way he seemed to press a little closer, the way his too sharp nails pricked the skin of his back. He had an idea that that probably shouldn't feel as good as it did, but he dismissed it immediately without bothering to analyze the thought. Ken always felt good, felt safe, even this part of him that was always so dangerous, so close to the edge.

"Sorry," Ken murmured and the nails retracted a bit before he removed his hand altogether and slipped the cartridge out of his mouth. "Forgot to take it out."

They both knew that was a lie. He never took it out until Chikusa asked him or he did something like that, never until he had to.

They actually probably lied to each other about a lot of things.

Too many things.

"I like killing the people who hurt you."

He hadn't meant to say it, but it came tumbling out anyway dropping into the warm space between them and he couldn't take it back. Couldn't stuff it back in or pretend he hadn't said it or that it meant something else, anything else. He was terrified of the way Ken swallowed and how he was breathing faster, almost panicked. Ken laid a trembling hand against his face and spoke soft and quick, "I'm gonna kiss you and I don't want you to take in the wrong way, okay? I just… I just need to kiss you right now."

He wasn't sure if there was a right way or a wrong way to take something like that and he was about to ask, but then Ken's mouth was pressed to his and he couldn't think of anything accept the warm slide of Ken's chapped lips against his own. The feel of Ken's fingers sliding up into his hair, finding and tracing over the scars there blindly. He was pretty sure he made some soft needy sound because that's how he felt. Soft and needy and warm and wanted as if all the anxiety of the past few weeks and months were melting away under those tentative touches, that mix of the new and the familiar, and then it was over as suddenly as it had begun.

"I… I'm sorry I… Chikusa… I like that you kill people that hurt me. I really… I _really_ like it. Sorry, I don't mean to," Ken confessed, resting their foreheads together. Chikusa snorted, surprised by how much better, how much lighter he felt just from that.

"I didn't kill the guard from last time."

"Yeah, I know," Ken replied hesitantly, like he was pretty sure Chikusa had a point but he just wasn't getting it.

"You don't. Mukuro made me promise not to. He killed him later. Let him bleed out and sat through it so he'd be able to recreate the memory for me. Every cry and whimper and I was glad. Happy to watch him bleed to death like that because he hurt you. I'm… I want everyone who hurts you to die like that while I watch. Sorry. I know it's weird." He shrugged a little, unsure how to continue.

The silence that fell between them wasn't awkward and Ken didn't look mad, just... contemplative. Which was a strange look on him because Ken wasn't much for quiet contemplation. Ken's fingers slipped up his back, kneading at the muscles there, soothing and strong.

"Look, there's nothing wrong with you, okay? I mean, okay, we're both big fucking freaks. Mukuro totally is too. We aren't even a little bit normal. Lancia told me… he told me, fuck, I don't remember all of it, but I think it was something about life being too short and that it was okay to be who we are and just be happy or something. It sounded nicer when he said it, I'll ask him to tell you when he comes back, but the point is that you're the best thing. You're the best thing in my life and you always will be. You insisted on watching some dumb guy bleed to death because he kept taunting me with fucking dog biscuits. That's stupid and awesome. I mean, I don't care if you get off on killing kittens… okay, well, maybe not kittens, we're not monsters, but whatever, I don't care. I only care about you. So, just… stop worrying about it, okay?"

"But Mukuro…"

"It's not like you fucking meant for that to happen. I mean, I know you kind of want me to be mad at you for losing your shit like that, but it's really not going to happen. I mean I'm the world's biggest asshole, because I'm just glad that it's Mukuro who went down for killing that guy and not you, because I wouldn't be able to handle it if you weren't here with me. I just couldn't fucking do it. I'd go crazy and eat a guard or something and then we'd all be stuck down in the fucking basement together. I need you, okay? I need you so fucking much it scares the hell out of me sometimes."

"Me too," Chikusa whispered, barely able to get the words out past the lump in his throat. And he's pretty sure it's somehow the most honest thing he's ever said.

"We'll just have to apologize a lot and get him something nice when we get out of here, because there's nothing we can do about it now even if we sit around feeling super shitty about it. What do you think he'd like?"

"Famiglia to murder?"

"Fuck, yeah, probably. He hasn't really gotten to properly wipe out a bunch of those mafia dickheads in a couple of months, right? He's probably going through fucking withdrawals or something. That's probably why he was so weird in Mumbai. We're all so fucked up. No wonder Lancia likes us, we probably make him feel so damn normal."

Chikusa smiled into the pillow, "Probably."

"Yeah, I think so too," Ken sighed, snuggling down next to him. "So, are you gonna have like a clean freak aneurism or something if I jerk off in your bed?"

"Gross. Yes. If you're gonna jerk off, do it in your own bed or go do it in the bathroom or something like you normally do."

Ken grinned, leaning forward to plant another quick kiss on his lips. "Okay, but I'm gonna fucking think about you killing people for me while I do it."

Chikusa felt his face warm at the reminder and he shifted uncomfortably, "You still can't do it here."

"Yeah, okay, fine, whatever, I'll be back." Ken commented, sliding out to drop down to his bunk. He'd only been gone twelve seconds when his head popped back up over the edge to look at him. "Hey. Why do you know where I usually do it?"

Chikusa answered that in the only suitable manner available by bludgeoning Ken with the pillow until he fell laughing back into his bunk and the red-haired girl told them both to shut the heck up and go to sleep already.

**-ooo-**  
September 1  
**M.M.**

They'd been there the better part of three weeks when the next incident occurred. She was honestly sort of surprised that it had taken so long for the old guard to try something. After all, while making a stir like they had got you noticed and gained you instant credit, it also slapped a target on your back because there was always someone with something to prove. Chances are they'd been left alone for so long because they usually stuck together like glue. She'd noticed that Chikusa, however, slept a little less than the other one (whose name she still couldn't remember and at this point it felt a little too awkward to ask) and had a tendency to wander off on his own for a few minutes every day while the other was still sleeping. Their cell was at the end of row near the bathroom and so they generally had both the most privacy and the best view of shady shit when it happened since murders and general shenanigans were more likely to happen in their considerably less supervised portion of the block then anywhere else. If she hadn't known better, she'd have sworn he was putting himself out as bait to draw out anyone looking to start shit, but she couldn't fucking imagine why anyone would want to do that. Especially not someone as practical as Chikusa seemed to be.

At least not until the day that she watched Chikusa kill five older Mafioso who tried to get a jump him when he was returning to their cell from one of these little wandering sessions. He moved gracefully, his fingers flying quick and precise between them and they dropped to the ground like marionettes with their strings cut. She sat up and called to him as he continued down the row back towards their cell, mumbling to himself as he stepped gingerly around the little blood puddles that were slowly forming around his attackers. "Hurry the hell up and get back in here before someone sees you. How'd you do that?"

He glanced at her, holding her gaze for a long moment, before holding up what looked like an overly long sewing needle.

"Don't get caught with that. They'll toss you in the box for a week," she glanced down at his feet where he was still shuffling away from the blood. She'd seen how he spent in the shower, the way he scrubbed and scrubbed and just barely made time to help Ken out with washing his hair, how particular he was about what and who he touched. "You won't like the box. And your boy won't like being away from you for that long either."

He nodded, pressing the needle into a groove in the wall. She'd never have seen the groove at all if she hadn't watched him do it and once the needle was inserted it seemed to disappear from sight altogether. "Thanks," he murmured, his voice soft and bland. He didn't sound particularly sincere, but he didn't sound like he was being a sarcastic jerk either, so she took the word at face value and nodded.

He slipped back into their cell and climbed gracefully back into his bunk while Ken continued to saw logs in his own bed. Figuring that was probably the smartest play, M.M. went back to her bunk and pretended to be sleeping until the guard found the bodies twenty minutes later and sounded the alert for the lockdown.

**-ooo-**  
September 3  
**MUKURO**

He was immensely tired of waking up with headaches.

Particularly those of the sort that came from being kicked in the head one too many times. He honestly hadn't meant to confine himself to solitary again when they were captured in Mumbai and returned to Traditore by the Vindice, not while Lancia was still in the infirmary certainly. He'd barely been conscious when they'd been captured, just enough to watch Ken and Chikusa attempt to fight only to be swatted down like flies. They'd never had a chance, but they'd still fought tooth and nail as the Vindice locked those shackles around their necks and then came for them. He remembered peering sleepily up into one of those awful bandaged faces and wondering vaguely if they'd be taken to Vendicare.

The trip back to Traditore had seemed mercifully short though he'd been sick through much of it, drifting in and out of dreams and nightmares as the usual fever ran its course. By the time they'd arrived at Traditore and Lancia had been taken the infirmary he'd had just enough control back to rush them through processing, skipping over the photographing portion of the festivities. They'd instead been ushered in to be searched and to change into their prison-issue uniforms.

"You okay?" Chikusa had asked, reaching out a hand to steady him as he wavered a little stripping out of his t-shirt.

"Well enough," he murmured, patting Chikusa's hand weakly. "You?"

Chikusa nodded stiffly, setting his hat gingerly on top of his neatly folded stack of clothes.

"This fucking sucks," Ken grumbled, gathering his discarded clothes into a pile and tossing them into the box provided. "And this place stinks even more than I remember."

"He's worried about Lancia," Chikusa volunteered, earning a half-hearted glare.

"Shut up. Like you aren't?"

"No."

"You're so full of shit, Kappa," Ken replied as the guard came back in to usher them out.

He fell into step with them as Ken and Chikusa continued to bicker about Lancia, about the prison, about anything to take their minds off of what was happening. Their bickering was a comforting, familiar sound that eased some of the tension from his shoulders as they moved through the corridors. He might have even smiled and while he was sure he heard the guard when he began telling them to shut up, it had been an easy distraction to ignore. It must have been easy for them as well, because, if anything, their argument just grew that much more spirited as they were all ushered through the door into their cellblock.

Ken sighed, irritably casting a glance up at the rows and rows of cells on the levels overlooking the central area they'd been marched into. "These beds are just the fucking worst. We should just sleep on the floor."

"Not sleeping on concrete. Too cold."

"Ah, it'll be fine, I mean, fuck, we can just lay the blankets down and-"

The guard, who had been standing behind him, maybe because he'd been listening to them for a full ten minutes and his patience was at is limit or perhaps because they were now in front of other people, repeated his last warning sternly, "Inmate, you will shut up or I will shut you up."

Ken snorted, barely even bothering to turn around to look at him. "Yeah? You and what fucking army, you limp dick bas-"

In retrospect, it wasn't the least bit surprising when the guard shoved past Mukuro and struck Ken with his baton so hard that the sound of breaking bone echoed through the room. If he'd been paying more attention to the dynamics at play and less to just how much he was enjoying listening to them after so long spent hiding away from them, he'd have been able to put a stop to it before he went that far. But the moment that guard broke Ken's jaw, there was no stopping it, there was only minimizing the damage. He saw the familiar flash of rage in Chikusa's eyes, saw him begin to move. He was still too unfocused to be able to possess even those two with ease and he'd never be fast enough to still Chikusa's hand. But, physically at least, he had always been just a touch faster than Chikusa even without his realms in play and he was standing closer to the guard. It had been an easy enough task to step between Chikusa and the guard and lash out. He felt the rush of air stir the hair at the nape of his neck and knew Chikusa had managed to stop himself in time as the guard dropped at his feet, gurgling blood all over his scratchy, prison-issued socks.

Everything moved very quickly from there as he'd folded his hands behind his head and cooperated when they came to take him.

The blows, when they came, were not unexpected. He'd killed one of them after all, so he hadn't expected to get away without some degree of physical retribution, but he should probably have been suspicious when they waited until after they'd hauled him down to solitary to dole them out. They'd all been worrisomely calm while they'd re-cuffed him and hauled him out of the general population area. He'd been kneeling in their comrade's blood and not one of them had taken a shot at him. Not that he'd have done anything differently even knowing how bad the beating would be. Ken and Chikusa could manage without him and Lancia, but he wasn't quite sure if Ken would be able to make it without Chikusa or vice versa.

In retrospect, he'd been foolish not to expect it to be quite so severe as it was. None of the guards were familiar and they all seemed to be itching for a fight. They'd apparently figured out his powers well enough to at least change over the guard when they'd all escaped or at least decided to take precautions. Not surprising really as he hadn't had the time or the presence of mind to be able to cover his tracks particularly well on that front.

It had been some time since he'd taken that severe a beating, probably not since he'd been impersonating that boy in Lucca. Though that man had often been drunk or high and while that had made him all the meaner and more brutal, it had also played hell with his accuracy. The guards that drove feet and fists into his ribs and stomach were not so sloppy as that. When a boot struck his forehead, sending sharp, thundering pain shooting through his skull, it became obvious that they probably weren't going to stop until they knocked him out. It took a long time or maybe time always seems longer when you're waiting for the pain to stop.

He'd awoken some time later in a cell. Everything ached and the pain only worsened when he rolled onto his side and spat a mouthful of blood and spit across the floor. His stomach roiled dangerously and he wondered vaguely how much blood he'd swallowed while he slept. He must have bitten his tongue at some point, though he didn't remember doing so, as it felt huge and swollen and made spitting difficult. He'd also apparently misplaced a molar during the beating, which was delightful, and one eye was so swollen he couldn't open it. Hilariously it was his realm-marked eye, so at least he wouldn't have to worry about how to keep it hidden while he couldn't summon even the weakest of illusions.

Everything hurt like hell, but at least (aside from the mysteriously missing molar) nothing seemed to be broken. Wonderful. He tried to reach out to Lancia and was met by failure and searing pain. This day just kept getting better and better. Too many blows to the head combined with the exhaustion from before maybe, tough to say for sure. He closed his eyes and wondered if they were all okay.

When he opened them again, he knew some time had passed because he felt less like vomiting and someone had been in the cell to clean up the blood and wrap a bandage around his head, he touched it with one tentative hand, wincing at the sharp twinge of pain. He still couldn't open his injured eye, but that wasn't all that surprising. It wasn't the sort of injury that healed overnight. A glance at the wall where he found the small collection of crude stick figures doing crude things he'd drawn during his last stay told him that they'd been thoughtful enough to keep his room ready for him.

How thoughtful of them.

He hadn't been awake long before three guards came in to clap him in chains- those were new- and muzzle him. So apparently they still weren't sure what his powers were, even if they had figured out he had some method of interfering with the guards.

He'd overheard the rules that had been put in place for dealing with him throughout the next week as he ate and slept and waited to recover enough to do something about the situation.

No one was permitted to come within fifteen feet of his cell.

Three times daily, his meals were pushed through a slot at the bottom of the door by two men cursing and sweating as they used long poles to open the slot and shove food tray in, he was always amazed when they managed to do this without spilling half the food across the uneven concrete floor.

The muzzle came open automatically when it was time to eat and closed again twenty minutes later. He drank water through a plastic straw and wasn't allowed to leave his cell or remove his chains under any circumstances.

Nothing particularly surprising and nothing that would hinder him overmuch once he was back to fighting fit, but a pain in the ass until then.

Days passed. Each one much the same as the last, the passage of time remarked only by scratches on his cell wall and how the bruises faded and the aches and pains eased.

September 13  
KEN

"My, but you have it bad," a girl's voice commented. He glanced up sharply annoyed that he hadn't noticed her earlier, that he'd been so distracted by his own shit that he hadn't noticed a potential danger standing three feet from them. Because there was no way she wasn't dangerous. No one in here was harmless. Fucking obviously. What the hell was wrong with him?

He glanced irritably back at where Chikusa was standing at the kitchen counter holding a tray and speaking with the men stationed there.

She leaned back against the table beside Ken just where Chikusa had been moments before, "So, so bad."

"What?" Ken replied, glancing away from Chikusa to look at the girl, their cellmate whose name he hadn't caught. She had short, swinging red hair and a wide grin. He didn't dislike her, she'd been cool about the shower thing and Chikusa had mentioned she'd kept her mouth shut about those fuckheads he'd killed a couple weeks before.

"You're into Chikusa, right?"

He thought about denying it, about pretending he didn't know what she was talking about, but in the end he couldn't really see the point. If she threatened to say something about it, he could always just kill her. "You got something to say about it?"

"No, just wondering why you haven't told him. I mean, c'mon, this is the stuff sexy prison films are made of."

"Gross and no and shut up," Ken grumbled, because… ugh. "I don't see what the fuck would be sexy about hooking up with someone in here. You're never really alone, not even when you've gotta take a shit. Some nasty pervert is always watching every fucking thing you do and these beds are fucking worse than sleeping on the ground. And everything stinks. I'd rather tear it off than actually go at it with someone in here."

"Huh, you always come off as crass, but you're kind of a romantic at heart, aren't you?" Her smile was weirdly infectious and he had to really put effort into scowling at her.

"And you're fucking weird. So, if you're looking for a free show, you can fuck right off."

She snorted, rolling her eyes, "Lesbian. I have almost no interest whatsoever in your dicks or where you want to put them so long as it isn't anywhere near me. I just think it's cute that you so obviously love him and he so obviously has just no damn idea."

He thought about asking her what the hell a lesbian was, but he was pretty sure she'd laugh at him and really as long as it meant she wasn't interested in… oh, that's probably what it meant. Come to think of it, maybe he had heard that term somewhere before- maybe TV or something- it just hadn't meant anything to him before now.

"Shut up. It's fine like this and don't you dare fucking say anything to him or I'll kill you."

The girl shrugged easily, "Sure. I'm not going to out you just for kicks. If you piss me off, I'll just kill you instead. So, you don't like it here at lovely Club Traditore?"

"Fucking no, this place fucking sucks. I didn't like it the first time and I don't like it now."

"You've been here before? Released or escaped?"

"Escaped. Why the fuck do you think they locked Mukuro in solitary?"

"Mukuro? Is that the other kid who was with you? The one who killed that guard?"

"Yeah," he replied, a little hesitantly. Sometimes he knew he said more than he should, but this didn't really feel like one of those times. Maybe. Probably. "That's Mukuro."

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure they threw him in solitary because he's crazy fast and he killed a guard. Though it was kind of fantastic, that guy was always a bit of a dick."

"Yeah, I guess," Ken shrugged, turning his attention back to Chikusa.

"Right. So, what's the deal with you guys? You're all obviously skilled as hell and you're all together so, why the heck are you here? Did you try to take over your Fam- wait. No, no, no, wait a second. Mukuro? As in _Mukuro Rokudo_?"

Ken hesitated as his brain caught up with her words and ran back over what he'd said and he let his head fall forehead first against the table with a loud thunk, "Fuuuuuuccccckkkkk."

_That's_ what the problem was, that's why he shouldn't have said that. They were supposed to tell people Lancia was Mukuro Rokudou.

Son of a bitch.

This is why he wasn't the one Mukuro talked about plans with, because he couldn't remember what he was supposed to say and what he wasn't supposed to say from one minute to the damn next. "What the fuck is wrong with me," he moaned slamming his forehead against the table a couple more times for good measure.

The girl's voice was filled with laughter when she spoke, pitching her voice low so they wouldn't be overheard. "Oh my god, really? Holy shit, that's good. I thought you were kidding. I mean there's like eight fake Mukuro Rokudou guys in Traditore right now. It's gonna be more popular than Mario Rossi as an alias sooner or later. Everybody wants to be the boogeyman and you're telling me he's a kid. That he's that kid."

"No, I'm not telling you anything," Ken grumbled into the table. Mukuro was going to kill him.

He felt the prickle of Mukuro's presence at the back of his mind. It had been almost a month, but he still had both the best and the worst fucking timing in the world.

_I'm not going to kill you. Stop being so dramatic._

Relief swept through him with the force of a hurricane and he grinned, face still pressed into the cheap, sturdy metal of the tabletop.

_I'm glad. I'm so glad. I'm so sorry, I…_

_Don't be an idiot. You're both idiots. I'm fine. Can't stay. Still tired._

_Okay. Okay. Sorry. Thanks._

He felt what was probably the weird Mukuro head-talking equivalent of being waved off and then Mukuro was gone. He lifted his head from the table and saw Chikusa miss a step on his way back to the table, the hint of a smile on his face as he clutched the tray tighter.

They were going to be okay.

M.M. was still talking to him and if she'd noticed anything odd about his behavior or anything, she didn't comment on it. "…ay, look, as a favor to you, I'll keep it quiet and just pretend you didn't tell me that, okay?"

He grimaced, glancing over at her smirking face. "Ugh, I'm gonna owe you a favor or something in return, right?"

"Well, of course, nothing is free in this world," she shrugged as Chikusa set the tray on the table and sat down across from them.

**-ooo-**  
October 8  
**MUKURO**

There were thirty-three days marked on his wall the day that officials, pompous mafia men in suits and ties, showed up outside his cell. The very sight of them made bile rise in his throat. It was these sorts of men that had hurt them at Esterneo, probably these very men who helped drive Esterneo into such a corner that they thought experimenting on their children was their best course of action. He wanted to kill them so very badly he could taste it and the vast darkness within him swirled and churned and hungered for that. For blood and pain and death and the joy of the slaughter. He licked chapped lips nervously and closed his eyes, reigning in those desires and pushing them down.

He took a breath, inhaling deep and slow, because he couldn't afford to lose it now. Ken and Chikusa were depending on him, to keep them safe and get them out of here. If he was going to do that, he couldn't afford to make any more mistakes. Right now, he needed to focus on recovering enough to be able to contact them easily, as the best he was able to manage was a few minutes here and there that he paid for with an incredible migraine later. It was enough to check on them, but little more and not nearly enough that he was able to do anything for them besides that. He exhaled slowly and reopened his eyes to look at them peering at him through that poor excuse for a window. Whoever they were, they seemed quite pleased with themselves as they stood outside his cell taking turns looking in on him as if he were some remarkable specimen or an interesting exhibition in a museum or at the zoo, perhaps. He felt the muzzle release and fall away altogether for the first time since they'd put it on him and he found the beginnings of fear swirling in his belly.

He rolled up to a sitting position, planting his feet firmly on the floor and letting his arms rest loosely across his knees. His head still ached every time he moved too fast, or at all really, but he knew it didn't show on his face. He smiled pleasantly up at these men and, while he still wanted to kill them all, the desire was distant, muted, and that was enough that he was able to sound bland, bored with their presence. "My, my, I so rarely have a chance to entertain these days. I'm hardly fit for such prestigious company."

"What is your name, boy?" One of the men called, a weak opening gambit if ever there was one. The man who made it was old, with graying hair and skin that was rough and cracked like old leather.

"Mario Rossi," Mukuro answered easily, same as he had when they'd originally been captured in Spain. His refusal to give any other name was part of the reason they hadn't booked him with the others the first time around.

"We know that's not true," another man replied, shoving the other to the side so he could glare in at him properly. He was a large man, his head as smooth and bald as an egg. His voice had that roughness that only comes from being a frequent and habitual smoker and Mukuro imagined he could almost smell the faint earthy smell of cigar smoke clinging to his clothes and skin. "Stop lying you little shit."

"Oh, you caught me," Mukuro replied raising his bruised hands to give them the sarcastic round of applause that revelation surely deserved. "Seems like you all came an awfully long way to tell me something I already knew. Surely you have something more interesting to say than just that?"

"Yeah? How about that we know you're a member of the Esterneo Famiglia? How's that work for you, punk?" The bald man spat the words at him and he said the Esterneo as if it were a curse, heavy with disgust. There was a brief scuffle outside the cell as the bald man was pulled away from the window. They must have been intending to sit on that piece of information until later. Too bad for them that baldy appeared to have a bit of a temper.

"Oh? Am I?" Mukuro replied, tilting his head to the side with a smile. He shoved the sick burn of dread away as sweat trickled down his back. That name again and again and again, inescapable.

The next man to the window seemed both older and younger than the last and he looked familiar enough that Mukuro felt a tickle of déjà vu looking at that man with his firm expression, shock of white hair and small, tidy white moustache. "You're probably a bit young to remember why, but you should be aware that Esterneo has no friends within the mafia community. As such no one was remarked upon it when they disappeared altogether several years ago. The Vindice received a tip about seven months ago that there was something of interest to be found at their former headquarters. Do you know what they found when they arrived?"

"No, but I simply can't wait to find out. This story is positively riveting," Mukuro replied and the strain of keeping his posture loose and his smile in place was incredible. It was difficult to focus on anything else besides keeping his appearance at odds with the screaming fear within him. It wasn't that they'd found the bodies or that he would inevitably be charged for his crimes. That didn't truly bother him. He'd been waiting for that hammer to fall for years and he couldn't care less that it finally had. In fact it was… almost a relief.

No, what bothered him was the timing. It felt like someone was smiling at him from the dark unseen and whispering that they were never beyond the reach of their past. That he would never be able to keep them safe. That they were still just the children they had been in that underground and the years between then and now meant less than nothing. The lab had just gotten bigger, the walls higher and the space between them infinitely greater. He could feel all the cracks within him aching and pulling against the seams. He couldn't afford to lose control now, not now, not here, not in front of these men. These were bosses and they wanted something from him. Something specific or they'd have sent their lackeys instead.

No, these men needed something from him.

Something.

"There were labs in the basement. We don't know what was being done there, but they were clearly working to develop something. The last thing Esterneo developed was incredibly dangerous," the man told him in what he supposed was supposed to seem like a sympathetic tone. "We know you were there and, while I would understand if you did not wish to speak of your time there, we would like to know if you know what they were developing this time, son?"

Us, he doesn't say. They were developing weapons that would allow them to destroy and control at will everything in their path until they rose to the very pinnacle of the mafia world. And they'd had no intention of stopping until they were the most feared Famiglia in the whole of the world.

They were creating monsters.

They were creating _me_.

Instead he forced his smile wider and replied, "I can't imagine why you'd think I'd know. As I mentioned I'm Mario Rossi and I was a member of the Cacciatore Famiglia."

"They found files on many children in those laboratories, not the three of you, but many others. They also found bloodied bandages in one of the upstairs rooms and a number of unexplained bloodstains throughout the underground area. It took some time, but fingerprints are easy enough to match up when you have an idea where to take them from and only a few possible matches. So, we already know that your friends upstairs, Chikusa Kakimoto and Ken Joshima, were there. And then we have you. We can take a blood sample from you and compare it to the samples we now have on file or you can simply admit you're Esterneo as well and tell us what you know. We'll, of course, be talking to them as well as you're all clearly survivors of the massacre that occurred there. I know this must be difficult for you, but…"

The man continued, but Mukuro could see clearly enough where this was going. They'd dance around it for hours or days or weeks, but eventually it would come to this. They'd badger Ken and Chikusa and wind them up and maybe they'd even start questioning Lancia as well as it must seem strange now that that he'd managed to pick up three kids who survived what they had. They all seemed so terribly proud of themselves, as if they'd solved some great mystery, just as Iemitsu Sawada thought he had, but they'd all been led to it like animals being led to a poison well. They'd all drunk deep because they couldn't tell or didn't care, but that poison wouldn't be the death of them. No, that poison wasn't meant for them. That poison was meant for the three of them. It was so much more satisfying to blame the living than the dead after all. So much more satisfying and interesting to have someone to blame that you could both condemn and punish. They'd all be able to go home patting themselves on the back for a job well done.

Oh, certainly he might be able to play off the fact that they had been _children_, but the mafia was a dangerous place where the children could kill you just as surely as any adult. Anything he said to justify what he had done would fall on deaf ears. All he'd be able to do would be to delay the inevitable and even then he'd never be certain how long that would last. Likely that was what Esterneo expected him to do. It was the smart play, to buy time, time to come up with a better plan, time to escape, but… no. He wasn't in the mood to play it smart for once. Better to play dangerously, fast and loose, if he were going to play at all. The only advantage he'd ever had was how far he was willing to go. And the whispers of those other lives made it very clear to him that if he didn't act quickly and decisively he'd end up in a cell in Vendicare while the others were left to rot here.

And that would not do.

_When they come to you, when they ask you about Esterneo, you're going to break and you're going to cry and you're to blame me for all of it. It was all me. All of it and you only helped me because you thought I'd kill you too._

_Mukuro? What's going on? Are you okay? What's happening?_

_It's fine. You promised to always do what I ask. You need to do this now._

_Mukuro?_

_We'll be okay. I'll contact you soon._

And then he laughed. He laughed like he'd wanted to do from the moment they'd shown up at his window. Not because it was funny, but because there wasn't anything else he could do. Laughed until his sides ached and kept on laughing long after that, while they asked what was so funny and one of them, frustrated by his refusal to cooperate, demanded a guard come and make him. An argument ensued about how dangerous he was and so, by the time the guard actually got around to keying open the door, he was ready.

He took advantage of his position and pierced his eye before the door swung fully open and he felt the human realm take hold as he flung himself across the cell, lightning fast, to smash the guard into the far wall. He slipped out of the cell into the corridor and landed a nasty kick on the old man who spoken to him first before they truly registered what was happening. He spun to his left, focusing flame to the tips of his fingers and jabbing his gathered fingers into the shoulder of the angry red-faced bald man and withdrew, leaving a gapping bloody hole in in his wake before sending another punch into the man's face, he heard the nose crunch satisfyingly beneath the force of his knuckles. There were others, but he ignored them in favor of snagging the white-haired man by the throat and strong-arming him into the far wall. He could tell that the man let him do it, but he wasn't one to look a gift opportunity in the face. "I am the massacre that occurred there, old man."

The old man looked more curious than disturbed or frightened, "Why?"

"Always the _why _with you people, isn't it? Does it really _matter_? Maybe I hated them. Maybe they killed me over and over again until it drove me mad. Maybe someone hired me to put an end to them because Esterneo was a blot on your precious mafia honor. Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe I just despise all you weak-minded mafia idiots and I want you all to die. You tell me. What seems most likely?"

The echoing stampede of booted feet heralded the appearance of several guards who wrenched him away from the man and wrestled him into submission. He fought, of course, it was expected and he managed to subtly mark three of those guards as well as one of the slack-jawed mafia idiots in the process, but he was never close enough again to mark that man without giving himself away. Not that he truly thought that he'd be fast enough to manage it anyway.

Vongola Nono still seemed to have plenty of spring left in his step even at his advanced age.

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
VONGOLA  
TRADITORE  
October 8

**TIMOTEO**

"You heard him. He's claimed responsibility for the whole thing," Pasquale snapped, turning his reddening face to the medic who was tending to his shoulder. "Be careful, you idiot! You just need to pack the wound and heal it up enough that I can get home and have my own medical staff see to it. What kind of incompetent are you?"

Timoteo sighed and threaded a hand back through his shaggy white hair. This was why he hated council business. Men like Pasquale who made mountains of molehills and perceived everything as a personal attack for which he was completely blameless. He'd read something once about hell being other people and he rather felt that was a sentiment that was most apropos when applied to the mafia. He quite enjoyed some Famiglia, it was half the reason Vongola had so many allies, but there were always some that he'd rather he never had to see or deal with again. "I realize that the confession and his actions do make it a simple matter to lay the blame for the incident at that boy's feet, however…"

"However? However _what_? There isn't any nuance here, Vongola. There's just that little monster. You've seen the file just as we all have."

"I have and what I'm attempting to clarify, if you could contain your objections until I am quite finished, is that the boy probably had a reason for what he did and it almost certainly involved preserving the life of himself and the children upstairs. It is quite clear that Esterneo was experimenting on those children. Any fool can see that."

"Certainly, just like any fool can see that in among all those adult bodies were the bodies of a few children as well."

"It's possible those children were killed during the fighting or…"

"Or he just slaughtered, indiscriminately, anyone who got in his way. I suppose we'll find out soon enough. Carmine and Erica are upstairs interviewing those other two though I imagine they'll be of little use in discovering the truth of what happened. This one is clearly the ringleader."

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
October 8  
**KEN**

"Fuck. Fuck those fucking fucks!" Ken snarled, lashing out at the bunk and kicking a nasty dent in the support.

"Jesus, who pissed in your porridge, eh? What the heck did those guys want with you two?"

Ken turned his gaze on her and, whatever she saw there, he could see that it scared her and that made him want to rip her throat out, because she was weak and if she was weak, she was… "Fuck," he spat reaching up and yanking the cartridge out, spiking it on his bed. "Fuck."

"Whoa. Okay, huh. That's… not something I am ever going to tell anyone about because… yeah. No," M.M. commented, sitting down on her bed and shaking her head. "Your boy still in with them?"

"Fucking, yes. They tossed me because I was rude, but I don't know what the fuck they expected because I did what he asked and cried and shit and they just kept asking and asking and asking us to make him the bad guy, but he _wasn't_ the fucking bad guy. Not then. I mean, we're all fucking bad guys, but we weren't then. He _wasn't_. He _saved_ us. But even if we could tell them that, they wouldn't fucking care, because they're the mafia. They don't fucking care about anything. Nothing that actually fucking matters, right?"

M.M. stared at him for a long time and he realized he'd done it again. He'd told her too fucking much again. Seriously, what the fuck was wrong with him? It had been really easy in New York and on the boat and in India and everything. He'd just lied and lied, just made stuff up and said whatever wacky shit came into his head and people believed him and it was fine. Was it because she was just there all the time? Maybe. But it was stupid. He was stupid.

"It's okay. I'm not gonna say anything," she commented suddenly, her expression serious and firm like it almost never was. She smirked a lot. Almost more than Mukuro and _that_ really said something because he smirked all the damn time. "No one is in here because they like the mafia. But you still shouldn't just go running your mouth off like that either. Secrets are like currency and you're obviously shit at keeping them, but I'm not going to rat you out or use it against you. I mean, seriously, I'm kind of making a habit of keeping your secrets at this point, you know? Plus. I like how honest you are. It's… kind of nice. Stupid, I mean, really stupid, but… nice. The mafia doesn't exactly suffer from an overabundance of honesty."

"I guess," Ken sighed, flopping down on her bed beside her. He'd never had a friend before, not really. Chikusa and Mukuro and Lancia were all different from that, important and necessary in a way that maybe friends weren't and it always felt weird to call them that. Kind of because he was pretty sure Mukuro would find it offensive, but mostly it just didn't feel like the right word for what they were. They were a lot more than that. So, maybe… "We're friends, aren't we?"

M.M. snorted, poking him in the side, "Don't push it, you overgrown hairball. Friends are for losers and suckers and I am neither."

"Sure, whatever," Ken replied, grinning.

It was nice to have a friend.

**-ooo-**  
October 9  
**CHIKUSA**

"Hey," he commented, slumping down on the bed beside Ken as the cell door was secured behind him.

Ken sat up immediately, like he'd been waiting for him, pulling him down into the bed, his fingers sliding under his hat and sweeping it away. He still wasn't sure how Mukuro had managed to wrangle the hat, but one of the guards had shoved it into his hands before they'd hauled them into that awful interrogation. It had made it easier to be under that kind of scrutiny. To have strangers look at him and talk to him and ask him all those endless, unrelenting questions about things he didn't want to think about. It was nice to have a hat again, but he had stopped wearing the hats to bed after that night in Mumbai and he had never regretted that so he didn't want to start again now. Ken knew all his scars by heart and he'd never flinched from them.

"Sorry I got kicked out of there like that. I didn't mean to leave you," Ken mumbled, fingers twitching nervously, but there were no claws and if Ken turned on his side, he was sure the wolf mark wouldn't be there. He'd taken the cartridge out on his own and that was pleasantly surprising.

"Why?" He asked, tapping a finger against Ken's lips.

His grin was a flash of white teeth in the dark. "Yeah. I left you alone with those people and I almost took M's head off when I came back in here. I can't fucking do that anymore until I get my shit together enough to actually handle it."

Chikusa nodded, "I'll help you."

"Damn fucking right you will," Ken grumbled, still grinning as he leaned forward and buried his face against Chikusa's throat, right behind his ear. "God, you smell good."

He would never understand that. He liked it, it made him feel nice, but he would never understand it. "No, I need a shower."

"You don't. It's too late and they wouldn't let you get one now anyway."

"Could wash up in the sink in the bathroom."

"Or you could stay here in this bed with me where it's warm and tell me about what happened after I got kicked out."

Chikusa sighed and relaxed back against Ken as Ken's fingers continued to push through his hair. He closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation and letting it banish the anxious awful feeling of being trapped in that little room alone with those people. "Same thing that happened before they kicked you out. Asked about Mukuro. Asked about my parents. Asked about you. Asked about Lancia."

"What'd you tell them about Lancia?"

"Same thing we tell anyone. He's Mukuro Rokudo. Picked us up when he was with Cacciatore."

"Think they're questioning Lancia like they questioned us?"

"Probably."

"What do you think he's telling them?"

"To fuck off."

Ken laughed, surprised and delighted, "You never say fuck."

"But he would."

"Yeah, he really would," Ken replied, still laughing.

**-ooo-**  
October 9  
**LANCIA**

"What part of _'fuck off'_ is it exactly that you're not clear on?" Lancia grumbled, glaring at the men standing at the foot of his bed. "Because I can keep singing the same old song, but it's not gonna mean a damn thing if you don't understand the lyrics."

"You're not exactly helping yourself out here, son," the white-haired man replied, running a hand back through his hair so that it seemed to stick up even more haphazardly than before. He looked like someone's eccentric fucking uncle even in that expensive-ass suit.

"Really? You don't say. And who the fuck are you exactly that I should give two shits what you think of me, old man?"

"I don't know that it makes any difference to you, but I'm Timoteo, and I speak for the Vongola Famiglia."

"Well, that's a different story. Vongola, you can go straight to fucking hell and take Iemitsu fucking Sawada with you," Lancia replied pleasantly.

Timoteo sighed in a long-suffering way that spoke of a long history of apologizing for the things Iemitsu Sawada had done. "CEDEF is an independent organization of which Vongola has little control or oversight, I'm afraid."

"And I can't begin to tell you how much I don't fucking care about that, because I'm gonna fucking blame you anyway. That guy's a fucking dick. He shot me three damn times to try and win some stupid fucking bet." Lancia replied irritably.

"That I do have to apologize for. Iemitsu is a good man, but he does get carried away when he finds something that catches his interest."

"No fucking shit," Lancia grumbled as he shifted his gaze to the man standing a little behind the Vongola Boss. "And who the fuck are you supposed to be?"

"Ah, this," Timoteo remarked, gesturing to the short, slight man at his side. "Is the head of the Bovino Famiglia, Ettore. Say hello, Ettore, it's only polite."

The head of the Bovino Famiglia was a tall olive-skinned man with dark hair and a pinched, irritable expression that looked about as happy to be there as Lancia was.

Ettore scowled at them both, his voice brisk and irritable, "I was not called here to be polite to criminals, Vongola. I was called here to judge whether we have the right to interfere with the Vindice's decision in these matters. I don't see why we're talking to him at all."

Timoteo's frown was deep with disapproval, "We are speaking with Lancia because I believe that he might be able to shed more light on the situation. And it costs you nothing to be polite, Ettore."

Ettore sighed, shaking his head and rubbing two fingers against his temple, "I apologize. You are right. I have worries of my own, but I should not be taking them out on strangers or on you. I must be patient and tolerate this inconvenience. Hello, Lancia. It is… I can not say that it is truly nice to meet you, but I can say I wish we were meeting under better circumstances."

"Uh, right, sure," Lancia replied, not quite sure what the fuck was actually going on at all anymore. "What the hell are the Vindice deciding?"

"The fate of Mario Rossi," Timoteo said, gravely, as if that was supposed to mean something to him.

"Who the fuck is Mario Rossi and why the hell do I care what happens to him?"

They both blinked at him as if they couldn't quite process what they were hearing then exchanged a look that kind of pissed him off before Ettore said, his voice tentative, "You do remember that you were brought in with three children, don't you?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"The one that has been confined to solitary calls himself Mario Rossi."

He snorted, "Does he? Well, I suppose he had to call himself something. Yeah, that little shithead is one of mine. What's he done now?"

He knew Mukuro had killed a guard and been taken down to solitary when they'd brought them in. The nurses had mentioned as much when he'd asked after the kids when he woke up handcuffed to this fucking bed a couple weeks ago. But that had been weeks ago and he was pretty sure that that shit didn't warrant a bunch of mafia bosses showing up like this.

"You are aware, I'm sure, that those children are from Esterneo."

Son of a goddamn _bitch_.

Esterneo. Why was it always, _always_ fucking _Esterneo_? He should really just start blaming those fuckheads every time something went wrong. Out of milk? Esterneo. Can't find the car keys? Esterneo. A bunch of mafia bosses show up to question you about something? Fucking _Esterneo_. He'd probably still be right at least half the damn time at the rate they were going.

Fucking assholes.

"What about it?" He said aloud, rolling shoulders that suddenly ached with tension.

"He confessed to the murders of everyone in the Esterneo compound. Forty-two men, thirteen women and two children."

"Did he now? Then what the fuck do you need from me?"

"Well, as you must realize that brings the question of how he was able to do such a thing. Obviously he's fast, we've seen this for ourselves as well as having seen it in the security footage of the incident that landed him in solitary. That said, some of us still have doubts regarding how even someone that fast could kill that many people without sustaining significant or life threatening injuries when he was only eight or nine years old."

"You telling me or you trying to ask me something, because if you're gonna just keep pussyfooting around you might as well fucking leave. I'm not gonna do your job for you, you know."

"Rude! He's so rude and disrespectful. But I am the Boss. I must tolerate such rudeness in the name of justice. Tolerate." Ettore grumbled, glaring at him though clearly talking mostly to himself.

Lancia just raised an eyebrow in response and shrugged.

Timoteo ignored them both, his expression placid, "What I'm trying to ask you, Lancia, is whether you know how Mario might have killed all those people and whether it was the same method that was used to kill other Famiglia during your time together. Like, for instance, your Famiglia?"

And there it was.

Funny how you could kind of see something coming and it still felt like a kick in the gut.

And he understood it for what it was. This was a chance. There was no Mukuro in his head telling him not to say anything, no illusion-based compulsion that kept him from blurting out the whole ugly truth of it. Hell, there hadn't been for months. Not since they'd left New York. There was only him and these men and an offer that if he told them there was an excellent chance they might believe him. An excellent chance he could go free.

And, sure, he probably could have told them about Mukuro.

Told them about everything. Every dirty little secret he knew and he knew a fair number at this point. But, even if they believed him, he wasn't sure he wanted them to. It wasn't that he liked being blamed for any of the shit Mukuro had done, but… he felt guilty enough about his part in it that he didn't feel like he deserved absolution either. Sure, he'd just been Mukuro's weapon of choice, but that didn't exactly make him an innocent man. He'd done plenty of shit and hurt plenty of people since he'd been with Mukuro. And a lot of that he'd done of his own volition.

Hell, he didn't even regret most of those fucking things since they'd usually kept them safe. There just wasn't a whole fucking lot at this point that he wouldn't do or give up to keep those little bastards safe. And wasn't that just fucking hilarious?

So, when it came down to whether to tell these fuckers the truth about Mukuro or himself?

That was easy. Hell, it was probably the easiest decision he'd ever made.

It cost him nothing to just keep quiet about what had been done to him, about the truth of what had happened to his family, about what he'd done since and why. He'd given up on being forgiven for all of the things he'd done a long, long fucking time ago. Like hell he was gonna throw those kids under the mafia justice bus just so he could get a pat on the head and a slap on the wrist from some ignorant fucks who didn't know or care what any of them had been through to become the people they were now. No, these guys could go fuck themselves.

"Nope, got no fucking idea. That Esterneo thing was a bit before my time. But I can tell you that the Cacciatore Famiglia and everything since? That was all me."

"Are you quite certain?" Timoteo asked, his voice softer than it had been. Like maybe he had an idea of the truth of things. Not that it mattered.

"Yup. Now, why don't you guys go ahead and fuck off, eh? I've got some beauty sleep to catch up on."

"Tolerate," Ettore muttered, still glaring at him.

**-ooo-**  
October 12  
**TIMOTEO**

Aria smiled, folding her hands behind her back as she leaned against the wall next to him. "I'm sure it will all work out for the best."

They'd both stepped out of the council room after the initial evidence was presented and arguments began. Neither Vongola nor Giglio Nero would get a vote in the end, it had been decided years ago that both Famiglia were too powerful to participate in the justice process where their influence might sway other Famiglia to abide by their decisions in order to curry favor with them. They were still allowed to be present and give evidence and testimony if they so chose, but deliberations within the council were held in secret and they would only be allowed to be present within the council chamber again during the sentencing. Instead, they were allowed to pick two minor Famiglia to represent their interests though those Famiglia were sworn to secrecy and could not discuss anything that happened behind closed doors with either of them unless or until that information was officially designated as something that could be shared. Typically, he was quite glad that he only had to deal with council business on such rare occasions, but on days like today it grated.

"You've seen something?"

"Hm, no, nothing so specific, I'm afraid," Aria shrugged a little, glancing away down the hall towards the meeting room. "The future is such a funny thing, dreadfully unspecific at the best of times really and that's how it should be. It takes so very little to change it both for good and ill."

"The vote?"

"Oh no, that's just perfectly obvious. I don't need to see the future to know they're going to kill that boy. They've all been chomping at the bit to kill someone over that possession bullet business for years," Aria sighed, patting him on the shoulder gently. "It'll all work out in the end, Timoteo, you'll see. These things always do. Will you be going to visit Lucia?"

Timoteo looked up sharply, "You noticed the similarity as well?"

"You mean that that boy is the spitting image of her? It was hard to miss if you know her. I only met her a few times, she was Mom's friend not mine after all, but she isn't the sort of person easily forgotten. She has such a wonderful laugh. She's still in Vendicare?"

"Yes, but I will negotiate with the Vindice for visiting privileges. She and I are old enemies, but when you get to be our age even old enemies are like friends."

"Mm, that might be true. Say hello for me, I'm not sure if she'll remember me, but if you could pass that along nonetheless, I'd appreciate it."

"I will. Tell your lovely daughter I said hello. How old is she now?"

"My Yuni? She turns nine next month," Aria replied, bright and joyful. "We're going to have a little party, just family and very close friends. You should come. It would be wonderful to have company. I've invited Uncle Reborn as well, but I understand he's quite busy training your successor so I imagine he'll be missing out this year."

"Yes, I'm afraid I have been monopolizing his time as of late. Would you like me to walk you out?"

"No, no, that's quite alright. I believe you still have some business left to do here and I really must be getting home. I'll see you soon," she gave him a little wave as she walked down the hall towards the exit, her heels clicking loudly against the rough concrete floor. Once she was gone, he turned and walked back to the solitary confinement area, unlocking the door and entering with a wave at the camera so that guards wouldn't all come rushing in in a panic.

The boy's cell was the third from the end and it was quiet when he arrived. He slid open the window flap and unsurprised to find the cell's occupant lying on his bed looking a bit worse for wear. He glared up at him and those mismatched eyes were just as disconcerting from a distance as they'd been up close. "I must say that I'm rather surprised to see you again. Didn't quite get your fill of thrills last time? You're in luck, they haven't been by to put the muzzle back on just yet, but I'm sure they'll be along soon enough. Better ask your questions fast fast, Nono."

"You recognize me?"

"Of course I do. You're the Boss of Vongola, it isn't challenging to remember the face of the Boss of the most influential mafia Famiglia."

"You know they plan to sentence you to death?"

"Do they? Thrilling. I can't say I'm surprised and they're certainly welcome to give it a go, but," he cleared his throat and spat blood across the floor. "Pardon me. Anyway, as I was saying, I don't expect Hell will be looking to keep me this time either."

"What you were saying before about Esterneo killing you? That was true?"

The boy who called himself Mario Rossi smiled dreamily and Timoteo wondered whether any of the medical staff had bothered to check him out before they locked him back in his cell or afterwards. He somehow doubted it. "Do you think so? Maybe I'm lying. I'm a really good liar, you know."

"I would believe that, but I don't think you're lying just now."

"I feel as if I should give you a prize, but I'm fresh out of rubber ducks. Oh, no, wait. Here you go." A rubber duck materialized on the windowsill an inch from his face. He backed up a bit and frowned at it. An illusionist. He'd thought the boy was using mist flames during the fight, but illusionists were rarely so competent at physical combat. "Oops, my bad, that's not a duck. That's a cobra."

He barely managed to slip out of the way quickly enough to avoid the cobra's strike. The momentum carried the cobra forward and it hit the floor with a plop, Timoteo struck out with his foot, crushing the cobra's head with ease as the boy's rusty, terrible laughter echoed through his cell.

"You're really quite good," he commented, turning his attention back to the window though he didn't step back up to it again.

"I'm quite good at a lot of things. So, I heard you nominated a successor! About time really, as you're getting quite old, but from _Japan_? I wasn't even aware your Famiglia had branched out into Japan. How novel."

Timoteo tensed, staring at the dark window from several paces away. Certainly no one within the Famiglia would have violated Omerta, if they had the Vindice would already have come around looking to haul them away. Besides, it wasn't exactly common knowledge even within the family as he didn't want to risk Tsunayoshi becoming a target before he was ready. Which begged the question of what and how this boy knew.

"You seem quite well-informed for an inmate in solitary," he commented, stepping forward finally until he could peer in the window at the boy who called himself Mario Rossi.

"Do I? I suppose I am. I also know he's just a boy."

"And what do you propose to do with that information?"

"What indeed?" the boy murmured, giving him a smile that sent a chill up his spine. "What indeed."

"Well, it would certainly seem as if I owe you two drinks, I suppose." Timoteo commented as Iemitsu answered the phone. He'd just left the prison behind and he could still see that child's strange eyes as if they were right in front of him. It wasn't just that they were unnatural that they haunted him, though that was certainly part of it. No, it was how… old they seemed. As if he'd seen more of life than anyone should have to and wasn't the least bit impressed by any of it.

"You saw him?"

"I did. I don't believe I've seen anyone move quite that fast in years, it was truly something to behold. He's a dangerous young man, whatever else he may be."

"Right? It's crazy. Did you see the other two?"

"I looked at their files, but there was no need to actually question them myself. The boy confessed to the massacre as soon as we inquired about it."

"Huh."

"What's that?"

"I... It's weird. I thought for sure he'd been the one hiding what happened at Esterneo. He's an illusionist, you know."

"I'm quite aware. He made a rubber duck for me and then turned it into a striking cobra. It was really quite interesting. He's also somehow aware that I've chosen a young boy from Japan as my successor."

"Well that's... huh. I guess he could have found out while he was in India, but man, that kid is a slippery little bastard. Oooo... do you think he'd go after Tsuna if he escaped? That'd be just the thing, wouldn't it? We'd really get to see the kid's full skill set and it'd be just the kind of challenge Tsuna needs. Man, that'd be great."

"Iemitsu Sawada, if you even think about it, I will kick your fool ass myself. You opted not to participate in Tsunayoshi's training and you are not to interfere now without Reborn's express permission. Do you understand me?" He growled in the tone he saved specifically for admonishing idiot teenagers and Iemitsu Sawada. It had never been terribly effective on Iemitsu even when he'd been an idiot teenager.

"Nono, you just have no sense of adventure! Are you sure you're not going senile? I remember you being more fun than this."

"We are not having _fun_ at your son's expense."

"It wouldn't be at his expense though! It would be for his benefit. Benefit, Nono. I'm telling you: a real knockdown, drag-out fight is just what that kid needs."

Timoteo sighed, rubbing at his temple, "It's a moot point anyway. He wasn't very forthcoming regarding Esterneo and neither were any of his companions. The council will have little choice but to sentence him to death. Normally we would leave this matter to the Vindice, but as he has now committed violence against the council in addition to his other crimes, they won't stand for any punishment short of death. If I didn't know better, I'd say he did it on purpose knowing what would happen. Though if that were the case, I can't say that completely blame him. Vendicare is a terrifying place and that is without a doubt where he would have been bound otherwise. He's far too dangerous to be allowed to live freely if he was able to create destruction on that scale as a child. Plus, as you say, he is an illusionist and that would be another strike against him if it were more widely known. I imagine if they'd been certain of that either of the last two times he was imprisoned they'd have taken him to Vendicare immediately. The other two, at least, will probably simply spend a few years in prison and walk out relatively clean. So that's something, I suppose. It's tragic that that boy will pay the price for the sins of his entire Famiglia. There was a time, you know, when the mafia was meant to be more than what it has become."

"The world's full of tough breaks, huh?" Iemitsu replied in that tone of voice that he knew meant he'd only been half-listening to anything he'd said. "I'm going to see what I can find out about any other possible Esterneo survivors. Somebody was definitely hiding that place all these years and I'm going to find out who."

Timoteo sighed and frowned at the phone. If Iemitsu had one fault, and he could freely admit that- as much as he liked the man- he had several, it was the double-edged sword of his fascinations. When he was interested in something he was tenacious, unstoppable, and it was simply impossible to wrest his mind from it and get him to focus on anything else until he was satisfied, as it would seem Lancia and these boys had experienced first hand, but the moment that interest waned it was as if it ceased to exist. The only thing he'd never lost interest in had been his lovely wife, Nana. Even his son had never held his interest for more than a few days or hours at a time and that was something Timoteo had simply never understood. If he could have one more hour, one more moment, with any of his boys he would move heaven and earth to make it so.

As to Tsunayoshi himself, it was difficult for him to imagine why anyone, much less the boy's father, would not treasure him. Certainly, he was a poor student, not even Reborn seemed to have been able to help that poor state of affairs much, but he was also a bright, kind-hearted and generous boy. Perhaps that was not what Iemitsu had hoped for in a child, he honestly wasn't certain and he'd never actually broached the subject having decided that some matters were better left between fathers and their sons. Still, in Timoteo's mind, there were certainly far worse things to be than generous or kind.

He greatly looked forward to each report Reborn sent him and to watching how that boy grew and progressed in his life from afar. How he had managed to befriend Andrea Gokudera's boy who had been a very difficult and unruly child the last few years. The way he seemed to make friends of all his enemies and the way he was blossoming under Reborn's tutelage. He couldn't have been prouder of the boy if he was his very own grandson. He was really something special and it was a shame that Iemitsu couldn't see that. But there was time, of course, time enough for the boy to grow and for Iemitsu to come around.

He sometimes worried about the burden he was placing on the boy, but there was simply no one else. He knew many of the more prominent members of the family preferred Xanxus, but there were… many reasons why Xanxus, who had been as much a joy to him as any of his children, wasn't suitable to be the Boss.

Xanxus.

Sometimes you simply failed the people you loved, in big ways and small, all your life until all that was left was regret and a desire to do better by those who remain. It might be cruel to pin such great hopes on such small shoulders, but as he'd realized when he chosen Tsunayoshi to be his successor… there was simply no one else who would do.

**-ooo-**  
October 29  
**M.M**

"You're Marie Malone, yes?" Ken inquired as he settled down across from her at the table. She'd finally managed to glean his name from a conversation she'd overheard him having with Chikusa the previous week and she was pretty thrilled to have finally managed it without having to ask. He was bouncy and jittery and kind of fun to tease and really… nothing at all like the boy sitting in front of her right now. The eyes weren't even the same. Instead they were weird, mismatched and intense, and everything about his manner was completely at odds with the boy who'd been her cellmate for the past few months.

"It's M.M., actually, but who are you? Because you're not him."

He smiled and it was wide and savage and mean and it was the sort of smile that suited the blond boy. "You are both right and wrong. I am Ken Joshima, but I'm also Mukuro Rokudo and I have heard a great deal about you."

"Oh? Have you now?"

"Mm. You'll take any job that pays well enough and your skills lie with the manipulation of vibrations. You typically use a clarinet as your weapon of choice, though I imagine you're skilled enough that it wouldn't be difficult for you to use your voice or another instrument to do similar damage. I also heard that you killed your parents as part of a particularly lucrative contract and that was how you truly got your start. That isn't what landed you in here, of course, but that ruthlessness does make you a highly desired assassin."

"So, basically you know what everybody knows? That's not very interesting," she replied, examining her nails. Which, come to think of it, really needed a touch up. The paint was beginning to chip around the edges. The cheap ass nail polish she could get in here just didn't hold up worth a damn. It was irritating. Not quite as irritating as smiling, snotty blond boys who claimed to be infamous serial mafia killers though. She'd never really believed Ken's claim that the boy he came in with was the genuine article, but… she would grant that this certainly was pretty damn weird even for the mafia.

"That's true, but I also know why you actually killed your parents and what you did that landed you in Traditore."

M.M. stiffened. It wasn't like this was the first time someone had insinuated she'd killed those bastards for some reason other than the money, but she'd never actually believed any of them. They'd mostly been assassin garbage looking to get a leg up by disparaging her reputation. This one though… this one was different. There was something in his tone or his smile that made her heart stutter faster in her chest.

"Oh?" She managed through lips that felt frozen, locked in place by fear.

"She's very pretty. The doctors say she might even recover some day if she gets proper care and has adequate time to heal."

And so much for all the money she'd spent to bury those damnable records, what a waste that had been. Of course, there was no reason to panic just yet. She was nothing if not practical, "What do you want?"

"As I mentioned, you are a highly-skilled assassin and in high demand. I have heard a great deal about you. You know more about us then I am comfortable with, but Ken likes you and you've been… good to him. I want to hire your services, but mostly I wish to purchase your loyalty. When you're not working for me, you should feel free to take any job you like. Whatever suits you, but when I call for you then you will come. You will come and you will do what is asked of you and you will never tell anyone why. Not even the other people who work for me, got it?"

"And what do I get out of this arrangement that prevents me from killing you and everyone you've ever met? I may not hate Ken, but I certainly don't like him enough to live out my life beneath the heel of your boot unless there is an incredibly compelling reason."

"I will pay you with my silence, my aid and my continued financial support."

"What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"I will keep your secret, for one thing, so long as you don't betray me. I will absorb the cost of her ongoing care so that no one will be able to easily connect her back to you and thus she will never be used against you again if it is within my power to prevent. Also, I will do what is I can to aid in her recovery if you ask it of me."

"If I ask it?"

"As you work for me, and spend more time around Ken and his apparent complete inability to keep his mouth shut, you'll inevitably learn more about my powers and what I am capable of, both for good and for ill. If, at any point, you want me to try to help her, I will do so. But if you never ask I won't interfere."

M.M. snorted, cutting her eyes at him, "You're a pretty smooth guy, aren't you, Mukuro?"

"Am I?" He replied and the quirk of a smirk on his lips was all Mukuro and nothing of Ken Joshima.

"I hate smooth guys. Give me time to think about it."

He pushed himself to his feet, still smiling that completely insincere little smirk. "As you wish. You'll have three days and then I'll expect an answer."

He didn't say that it had better be the right one, but she was smart enough to figure that the implication was there. She'd known plenty of powerful men in her short life and plenty of weak men who played at it. The men who could destroy you, who could smash everything in your life worth having and leave you sobbing in wreckage before they killed you, those men didn't issue threats or ultimatums. They never bothered to tell you what they could do.

They just did it.

**-ooo-  
****THEN**  
GAZZA  
LONDON  
2001

**M.M**

She hated England.

She hated the rain.

Most of all she hated her parents for making her come on this stupid trip.

She could have been at home, could have been at _school_, and it still would have been better than having to sit through meeting after meeting with these _losers_.

She'd been in such a hurry to just get the hell out of there she hadn't bothered to even think about the fact that it was cold or that it might rain (because, really, it was England and rain seemed to be less the weather and more just the general condition of the place). So, she'd left her jacket behind and her umbrella and she'd already been three blocks from the hotel and unwilling to return when the rain began. By the time she reached the pub on the corner, she already felt and probably looked like a drowned rat. Her mother was going to be so pissed that she'd ruined her dress. Not that she really cared what her mother thought. Plus, this dress was awful and it didn't suit her at all. Though now that it was water-soaked and limp and clingy and the water had darkened the cloth to a deep red that was almost black so that it didn't clash so badly with her hair, she liked it a little better.

"Afternoon, love. You look a sight," the woman behind the bar called, a smile on her pretty, age-worn face. English. Ugh, right, of course, English. She wasn't fantastic at English, but she understood well enough to give the woman an answering smile and a tentative nod.

"Tea? Um, Green?" She asked, terribly conscious of the fact that her accent was thick and the English words sounded awkward tripping off her tongue. Fortunately, the woman at least seemed to understand what she wanted and that she wasn't English. She smiled sympathetically, as if sopping wet French girls wandered in off the streets all the time requesting tea in broken English, and gestured for her to have a seat.

Hell, maybe they did. It rained a lot here and she'd met more than a few people who spoke French at the hotel.

Marie turned to scan the little pub and found that she wasn't quite the only occupant. There was an old man rustling a newspaper in the corner, a pint on the table in front of him like he had no idea it was half past ten in the morning or didn't care. A fine plume of smoke rose up from behind the paper so that all she could really see of him was that neat wavering line of smoke, a cloud of grey hair floating above the top of the quivering paper and his craggy, dry and wrinkled blunt fingers where they grasped the pages. She wrinkled her nose and frowned, she didn't particularly enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke. Her mother was an avid smoker of long thin cigarettes that smelled like mouthwash and ash. She'd never understood what the appeal could be of smelling forever like you'd doused yourself in mouthwash and lit it on fire. Her mother did seem to enjoy it well enough though and her father must not hate it either since mother rarely did things of which father did not approve.

The other side of the pub was blessedly empty and she sat down gingerly at a table in the corner, well aware that she was dripping all over everything as she dropped her bag beneath the table. She was more than a little surprised when a moment later a short stack of bar towels and a t-shirt with the pub's name 'The Wild Oats' scrawled across it in flowing script were dropped onto the table in front of her. She glanced up with a soft "Merci" on her lips only to find the woman already waving off her thanks as she bustled back behind the bar. She thought of refusing the shirt, but it was better than nothing and the pub was cool enough that she imagined she'd probably be glad of the extra layer. With that thought in mind, she left her bag under the table, picked up the towels and shirt and went off in search of a bathroom to try and at least ring some of the water out of her hair and clothes.

When she'd come back out there was a girl standing at her table. The girl looked to be about her age and had long dark curling hair that was probably beautiful when dry, but now just looked dreary and wet and limp and was already beginning to go all frizzy in the warmth of the pub. She looked about as damp and worn and bedraggled as Marie felt as she struggled her way out of a sopping wet green pea coat, stuffing it awkwardly into the seat beside her after she finally managed to free herself from it.

Marie winced, "If you do that, it'll never dry."

The girl blinked up at her through foggy, thin-rimmed spectacles for a long moment before frowning and slipping them off and setting them down on the table. Her eyes were very dark and when she spoke, it was in stuttering, stumbling French, "I'm sorry, were you speaking to me? Uh, my French is… um, not so good?"

Marie felt her cheeks warm as embarrassment flip-flopped in her stomach. She hadn't even realized she'd spoken to her in French. She switched to English knowing that her words were just as clumsy in English as the girl's had been in French. "Yes, I… sorry. I forget sometimes… the English. You, um, your…" And that was incredibly lame. She couldn't even think of the word for coat. Finally she just sighed and reached out, snatching up the girl's squashed coat and shaking it out. The quality of it was rather fine and the material was heavy just as she'd thought it would be. It was really quite nice. She brushed it down and then turned a glance to the woman behind the bar, gesturing to a couple of empty bar stools. "Do you…?"

"No, no, that's fine. Go ahead, dear," the woman replied. "We don't really get busy until early evening. Plenty of time for the coat to dry a bit."

Marie nodded and laid the coat over the bar stools, straightening it carefully. When she was done, she stood back to admire her work and felt a tentative hand settle on her shoulder.

She turned and found that those eyes seemed even darker up close. "Merci beaucoup," the girl said, her voice soft and far more certain with those words than she'd been with all the others. "Would you like to sit with me?"

And that simple invitation felt… dangerous.

Her parents didn't approve of her getting involved with civilians and even less when it came to girls. She hadn't straight out told them that she was gay, but she often wondered if her mother hadn't guessed anyway. She'd seen the disapproving looks her mother shot her way when she stood too close or lingered too long with Heidi or Inés at the school gates. She somehow doubted she'd look so pinched and irritated if she chose to flirt with Jules or one of the other boys that came sniffing after her because they were impressed by her family name. Everyone at that snooty private school came from mafia Famiglia so that certainly wasn't the problem.

And now there was this girl who didn't even know her name. She was pretty and about her age and she seemed nice and there was something in the way the girl stood close and touched her shoulder that felt… dangerous. And unsurprisingly, dangerous had a certain appeal after all the boring she'd been dealing with since they arrived in this country. Besides, what could be the harm? She was just a stranger in a strange land having tea with a girl while they waited out the rain. What possible harm could truly come from that?

So, she'd smiled and agreed and they'd sat together while the woman behind the bar brought them two teapots and cups and left them to it. They spoke slowly, alternating between English and French whenever one of them got hung up on a misplaced verb and the girl, whose name was Bee (which was short for Beatrice, she said), was nice and she liked to read and she had come to London for school.

"Shouldn't you be in… hm… classes, is it? It's Monday, you know."

Bee smiled, a little sheepishly, "I decided to skip. I have this book and I really wanted to finish it today." She gestured to a book that had lain unnoticed between them on the table. It said something that Marie somehow hadn't noticed it was there before now and she sat up a little straighter to read the title.

"The Vampire Lestat?"

"Yes. It's very good," Bee replied enthusiastically, nodding. "It's about a boy who is… um… very passionate. He becomes a… um… " She switched to English with a grimace, "I have no idea what the French word is for 'vampire'."

Marie laughed, "It's still vampire, actually. It's a little different in Italian, but in French it's just the same even if the pronunciation isn't quite."

"Ah, okay! That makes sense… you know Italian, too?"

"I… um, yes. It's…" Marie thought for a moment, trying to come up with any explanation other than 'because I'm in the mafia and when you're in the mafia they beat Italian into you from birth'. "My mother is Italian, so…"

"Ah, I see," Bee replied as if that explained everything and perhaps it did. She'd never thought much about it being more because Italian was her mother's native tongue that they'd used it so frequently in the house. She'd always thought of it as more of an extension of all the business. But, maybe it wasn't. Or maybe it wasn't just that, which seemed more likely.

"So, the book…" Marie prompted, because anything was better than talking about her family.

"Oh, right! So, it isn't so much him being a vampire as it is about his adventures and trying to find himself and love…" she paused and her smile turned a little pained. "Sorry, I… you must think I'm very silly."

"No, not at all. Though I'll admit, I've seen this novel in the bookshop back home and it did not look nearly so… um… mature?"

"Would you like me to read you a bit?"

"I… yes?"

Bee nodded, smiling and the flipped the book open to a marked page, setting the cardboard marker aside. "Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds - justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner."

She paused and smiled and Marie found herself nodding quickly and returning that smile with one of her own. "Yes, you're quite right. It is… lovely."

And it was, but more than that, she was lovely. There had been something peaceful about listening to her speak and, even though she hadn't quite understood all the words, the feeling beneath them was one that caught her breath. She laid her cheek against her open palm and asked in a voice soft with something like affection, "Would you mind reading me a little more?"

And Bee nodded and began to read and Marie closed her eyes and listened, let Bee's soft even tones and crisp annunciation of the words roll over her as she sipped her tea and, even with the faint dampness of her clothes, she was still somehow the most comfortable she had ever been.

Bee was lovely and warm and sweet and everything Marie Malone was not and they sat together the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. The book, long finished, lay on the table between them as they drank the last of their tea and people slowly began filing in as the workday ended and evening came on. The rain had stopped hours ago and, while she had noticed, Marie hadn't been able to bring herself to care. There had been the book and then lunch plates that had come and gone and she'd paid the bill for both of them an hour ago. The woman brought them water and had allowed them to continue to sit long after most people would have sent them on their way. Marie had enjoyed this day and the quiet, halting conversation that flowed easily between them. They'd spoken of books and films they'd seen and a hundred other inconsequential things. It had been nice and she was reluctant to leave it behind in order to return to her real life even though she was well aware that it was well past time for her to do so. When she said as much and began to reluctantly gather her things, Bee had nodded and stood up abruptly.

"I'd like to see you again," she commented, quick and forthright and perhaps a little nervous. "Could I see you again?"

"I…" Marie began, hesitantly, and she knew that she shouldn't. That this had been a nice break from her life, but that was all it had been, all it could be really. Someone like Bee didn't belong in her world anymore than she belonged in Bee's world of books and school and tender blushes. "I… I'm afraid I'm leaving soon and I…."

But Bee was already nodding again, quick and sure as if she'd been expecting that answer before she'd even asked the question as if rejection were the natural order of things. Her smile couldn't have been more false if she'd cut it from a magazine and pasted it on her face. "Yes, yes, of course, I'm sorry. You did say you were only here for a short while. I shouldn't have…."

"No, no, I'm… I'm sorry, it's just…" How did one say that it 'really isn't you, it's me' without sounding like you were just putting them off? Was there a way to say that where it sounded true when you couldn't easily explain the circumstances? No, there was only the one way to say it and it was only going to make this worse and more uncomfortable and… "I could have dinner with you tomorrow if… if you weren't busy?"

And that brilliant smile was worth the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Was worth the trouble it would be to escape from the hotel and her Famiglia again tomorrow.

Yeah, that smile was worth a lot of things.

They met twice more after that. Once for dinner the next night, at a little Indian restaurant a few blocks over from the pub in which they'd met. It had been nice, the flow of conversation easier as they found a rhythm, switching back and forth between English and French a little less frequently. They'd spoken French in the restaurant, spoken English as Marie walked Bee back to her school, as she'd hesitantly punched her number into Bee's phone and warned her to only call in the evenings after twenty-one hundred when she could be almost certain she wouldn't have to deal with awkward questions from her parents. They'd spoken the next two nights, Marie whispering into the phone in the screen-lit darkness of her bedroom at the hotel until the early hours of the morning.

Then the dream was over and it was time for her to return to France, to her real life, so she agreed to meet Bee again on that last day in the morning before Bee had classes.

"Hey," she called, waving a hand so Bee would see her. Bee was leaning back against the wall near the school gates, a brightly colored bag held awkwardly in one hand. "What's that?"

"Oh, just, I thought… to… um… a souvenir to remember me by, that sort of thing," Bee replied awkwardly, fidgeting and holding the bag out.

"You realize I'm not going to forget about you just like that, right? I don't need a trinket to remind me of the fun we've had."

"I know, I just… I wanted you to have it, so…"

And Marie was looking down at the bag curiously so she didn't see it coming at all. Suddenly there was just the feel of lips pressed against her cheek, warm and trembling and so quick and then gone. Followed by a softly murmured, "Safe travels," and the clip clack sound of clunky Mary Janes across the pavement as she ran away.

She glanced up to find herself staring at Bee's sweater-clad back as the other girl hurried back through the school gates as the bell chimed.

She sat down on a nearby bench to open the bag and pulled out a book. Because of course it was that same stupid vampire book from the day they met complete with the cardboard bookmark on which was written Bee's phone number and an e-mail address with the cheerful message: 'keep in touch'.

"Dammit," she whispered, clutching the book tightly to her chest.

**-ooo-**

She adored her.

That much she knew and she missed her far more than anyone ever had the right to miss someone they'd known for less than a week. It had taken her all of about two weeks before she decided 'fuck it' and e-mailed Bee. They'd mailed back and forth, rapid fire, about all the boring bits of their everyday lives. She'd called her a few days later and it was like they'd just spoken yesterday. Everything was easy and wonderful and they spoke every day for a few minutes or a few hours and never seemed to run out of things to say. After a few months, Bee began taking the train out to see her every other weekend. They'd meet up in Paris and they'd do stupid tourist things all day and in the evening they'd both catch late trains home and they'd e-mail and call each other during the wee hours of the morning and then do it all again over again two weeks later. And it was amazing and the closest she'd ever been to being completely and unreservedly happy.

It wasn't love, at least she didn't think it was, but she thought that maybe it could be someday. Or something very much like it. She really liked the way she felt with Bee, liked the person she could be with her, soft and hard only when she felt like it, and also kinder and more genuine than she'd been with her family, with anyone really, in years. It had been… nice. Not perfect, of course, but then she didn't believe in perfect. She believed in the feel of Bee's fingers in her hair, sifting through those red strands as if they were something precious, and the way her breath stuttered after they kissed the first time. And how she wanted things, so many things, that she'd never even thought about before from this lovely English girl.

And then it was over.

All her happiness shattered in the blink of an eye by an explosion.

She wasn't dead.

That was the first thing.

Marie had gone to the hospital immediately when she'd heard about the crash on the news, frantic and sobbing and trying to shove the terror down so she didn't kill any of the poor nurses. Nurses who didn't seem to realize that she'd been trained to kill people with her bootlaces when she was seven and how dangerous it was to their continued health and well-being to keep speaking to her as if she must simply not understand what was being said to her and saying slower or using smaller words might help.

"My sister was on that train. No, I didn't bring I.D. with me. I was a little more worried about getting here. I just need to know if she's okay, that's all. Please. Please, I just need…"

The nurse sighed, exasperated, but finally relenting. "Okay, just… wait, okay? What's the name?"

"Bee. No, sorry, it's Beatrice Colfax. She lives in London."

The nurse typed away at her computer, frowned, shuffled some papers around, looked back at her and then back at the screen again, "I can tell you that she's currently in critical condition, but that's all I can tell you without proof that you're a member of the immediate family."

She stayed at the hospital.

She stayed and she begged and cajoled and barely avoided outright threatening people for the next two days. Eventually she found out that Bee was comatose that she'd sustained several nasty burns and a long list of breaks and fractures, but the head trauma was by far the most serious injury. She might never wake up, they said when she'd finally convinced them she was family, a half-sister because that was the only acceptable shade of family she could pass for and even that had gotten her funny looks. The doctors probably hadn't truly believed her, but they'd seemed sympathetic enough. Maybe just because Bee didn't have any other family that they'd been able to find so there was no one to complain about it.

Those two days she'd spent sitting in the waiting room, watching the news about the crash and drinking the swill they passed off as coffee, a suspicion had grown within her. The cause of the explosion had been a bomb placed in the third car. It had been just large enough to blow the car and the impact had sent the whole damn thing careening off the tracks. A faulty coupling had kept the car from detaching thus losing momentum and that had sent the whole damn train tipping over onto its side. Injuries could have been far worse than what they were; only fifty-five people were actually killed in the explosion and the subsequent derailing. Every passenger in the third car, where the bomb had been placed, had died instantly as the third car had been utterly decimated.

The third car, where Bee would have been seated, if she'd actually been in her seat rather than in the bathroom one compartment over when the explosion occurred.

If she had been in her seat, she would be among the dead.

The talking heads on the TV kept shouting about terror attacks but no one came forward to claim responsibility. Though who could blame them? Whoever had done this had been sloppy and no one liked a sloppy demolitions expert. Everything about it felt half-assed and amateurish. If they'd used a little more fuel or waited for a slightly more opportune place to blow the charge, they could have done far more damage. And if they'd used a little less fuel they could have just taken out that car, killed everyone inside that one single car, and the train would have kept rocketing on its way without any additional damage. It just seemed… strange that a terror attack would be so poorly planned, would be so lacking in clear purpose.

On the third day, her father came for her.

Several bodyguards, a couple she recognized and far more that she didn't, filed in before him, taking up positions around the room as if he were some sort of visiting dignitary who was in danger even here. Of course, maybe he was. Her suspicions were rather quickly coming into focus. It was part of the reason she'd stayed here so long when it was clear she wasn't going to be allowed to see Bee, that she was going to have to settle for the scraps of information they imparted to her and the observations she made for herself by piecing together everything she heard and saw. She always made a point of leaving her cell phone behind when she went to meet Bee in Paris. She made a point to ditch the tracking chips as well, passing them off to Jules on her way out of town so that he could cover for her. She never told him where she was going, he never asked, they'd become much better friends since he'd stopped trying to get a hand under her skirt, but they still weren't close enough for secrets and confidences beyond little favors like tracking exchanges. So the question, of course, was how her father had known just where to find her.

He came in and sat beside her in one of those cracked and peeling orange seats and stared at her for long moments in silence as if willing her to speak first. Perhaps he wanted to offer her a chance to explain or offer excuses, but she found that she simply didn't have anything to say to him so she sipped her coffee and just kept right on watching the news. He was a big man, her father. Tall and barrel-chested and strong, with ginger hair, pale skin and a great big hands that she'd once seen him use to strangle a man who'd cheated him in a business deal. She'd been seven and he'd come to kneel in front of her afterwards and explained that one day she would stand at the head of this family and that meant sometimes she would have to do ugly, but necessary things to maintain respect and prominence within the mafia.

"You missed school today," he said finally. Her father, Dominic Malone, third head of the Gazza Famiglia: Master of the Obvious.

"Yup," she replied, taking another sip of her cold and bitter coffee-flavored sludge.

"Would you like to explain to me why? Why you're here?"

"My girlfriend was in a train accident. Seemed the place to be," M.M. replied, because Marie would never have dared to speak to her father like this. She might not like him, but she feared him and so she would never disrespect him so brazenly or deal with him so bluntly.

"Yes, I heard there was an accident," he replied, his voice pitched dangerously low, his hands dangling loose and open between his knees as he leaned forward, not looking at her. "It's tragic how these things happen. We've already lost thousands waiting for the site to be cleared, for the trains to start running again. Fortunately, the thousands we've made accommodating and rescheduling transport with our shipping companies and cargo transports have offset that loss. I suppose even the largest fuck-ups can reap some reward. You will be returning to school tomorrow."

"I don't really see that happening."

"Beatrice Colfax, was it? This girl who is your friend? From London? Attends St. Catherine's Boarding School? She doesn't have any family and she's going to require long-term care. She's also English so she'll need to be transported back to England to a facility there once she's stable in order to continue to receive that care. There's truly no telling what might happen. It's so dangerous for someone in her condition to travel, don't you think?"

"I suppose it is. It's probably better if she stays here," M.M. agreed, nodding briefly, her face pleasantly free of emotion. "I'll be returning to school tomorrow after all."

"That is good to hear. Though I suppose we'll see what happens when she's stable enough to travel as I understand that won't be for a few weeks yet."

"That's what I've heard," M.M. replied mildly, taking another sip of her coffee. "Her condition is very delicate, but they say she's a fighter."

"That's good to know. I'll expect you home in time for dinner tonight. I'll leave Don and Ana here with a car to bring you when you're ready."

"Sure. See you at dinner."

She went home that evening and ate dinner with her parents, answered their attempts at conversation with brisk, brief sentences and excused herself after dessert. She finished the homework she'd neglected during her absence, tuned and cleaned her clarinet and went to bed.

The next day she began making inquiries. It didn't take very long to learn the full truth of that train crash. To find and kill the incompetent fuck her parents had hired who had blown up and derailed an entire train in order to kill one child and send a very obvious message to another. And, on one front, they'd been wildly successful. Marie now understood that she would never know joy while her parents lived. That money could buy anything. Money could buy a life and break it to pieces and if it could break one, perhaps it could fix one as well.

It hadn't been tough to find a contract on them. Her parents weren't well liked in the mafia community. After all the Gazza Famiglia controlled several key methods of transportation between England and France and Italy. They were stingy and greedy and charged too much for the use of their connections and services. And while they'd made the train crash easy to track back to them for her benefit, she hadn't been the only one who'd found it a simple matter to chase it to their door and it certainly hadn't endeared them to anyone. The mafia didn't approve of such showy methods of instilling lessons. So, it really shouldn't have been that big a surprise that many, many people were all too willing to pay large sums of cash to relieve her parents of their lives.

She wasn't an expert when it came to bombs or guns or any of the other weapons used by her Famiglia or by the majority of the mafia for that matter. It hadn't been her intention to become an assassin so simplicity hadn't appealed to her. After all, she was destined to be the next Boss of the Gazza Famiglia and when you were going to be the boss you needed a weapon worthy of praise. A weapon that was unique and exclusive and priceless. The weapon she had chosen was far more interesting than a mere gun or sword or whip and using it had taught her many things, but no lesson was as prominent in her mind as the great and lasting repercussions of inaccuracy. After all, if she blew the wrong note, if her aim or pitch or volume were just the slightest bit off she could penetrate a wall and kill the person on the other side or cause molecular breakdown within load-bearing walls sending the entire building crashing down on their head. She'd chosen the clarinet because she loved it, not because it was an easy weapon to master. It required diligence, patience, planning, and precision to use effectively and that was what made it appeal to her. Her instructor had said she was the first to choose to wield a modified instrument in twenty years and only the second to choose that clarinet. That it had been invented by the mafia's most prolific scientific mind and he'd been the only one to ever be able to use it effectively. The person it had been initially designed for had attempted to use it a few hours after its completion and had accidentally blown their head off. He just hadn't been good enough. So the weapon had been placed into storage, the inventor writing it off as a modest success. She had smiled and slid her fingers over the rough black case and it had felt like fate. As if this beautiful instrument had been waiting just for her.

Her parents had blown up a train car to steal her happiness.

So, she used her beautiful clarinet to cook them in their own bed and collected a paycheck that would keep the girl who had given her that happiness alive a little longer.

It seemed only fair.

Maybe it would have been better if they'd killed her. Better that than for her to be trapped in limbo for the rest of her life, however long that might be. Bee didn't have family to speak of, at least none that she'd ever mentioned and certainly none that the officials involved in her case could find. The doctors said she might improve and so Marie clung to that hope and became the assassin called Metronome Marking on the message boards. She slowly and methodically set about the process of dismantling the interest of her Famiglia from the inside while making truly obscene amounts of money in the process. She stood as the fourth Boss of the Gazza Famiglia and allowed her Famiglia and their business to be torn to pieces and smashed to bits. She watched with no small amount of satisfaction as her parents' legacy went down in flames as her own private accounts flourished.

In the end, the Vindice had picked her up for that unlawful destruction of a mafia Famiglia. Apparently, she'd been totally within her rights to take a contract and kill her parents, but the second she'd started making moves that truly impacted the mafia in general in a negative way that had been a step too far and been something for which she needed to be imprisoned. There was something funny in that and something true as well. She'd always suspected that the mafia only valued the health of the organization over the individuals within it. It was comforting to have that suspicion confirmed.

The only thing that deserved her loyalty was money. After all, money would never betray her trust.

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
THE GANG  
NORTHERN ITALY  
November 4

**M.M**

And now… now there was Mukuro. Mukuro who smiled at her across the table with someone else's face and told her he would help her and pay her and keep her secrets.

When she'd called to check on Bee's status the day after she agreed to work for him she'd been told the billing had been changed and she was being moved to a private facility where she would receive the best care available. When she checked her accounts that same day, they were flush with new funds. Funds enough to keep her living quite comfortably if she were to escape from this prison, as Mukuro indicated they soon would.

Days had passed into weeks and when she asked Ken where he was, whether he had something he wanted her to do, Ken had just laughed like it was funniest joke and maybe it was. He'd said not to worry about it, that Mukuro never told anyone anything until he was good and ready. She wasn't sure if she liked or hated that way of doing things, but it definitely put her on edge. And, when she finally began to feel like maybe Mukuro Rokudo was some kind of weird fever dream he finally shown up again. Sliding into a chair across from her at the table, a playful unnatural smile quirking Chikusa's thin lips.

"And here I was thinking I'd never hear from you again," she commented, laying her hands flat against the metal surface of the tabletop. "Thought we were supposed to be getting out of here?"

"That's the plan."

"Yes, but when?"

"Soon enough. Our fourth is still in the infirmary healing up from injuries he suffered when we were brought it. Once he's recovered we'll escape, it isn't that difficult a thing, but I have a few more things to organize if we're going to be able to get away clean. How's your Japanese?"

She frowned, raising an eyebrow, "Much better than my English, worse than my Italian. My mother was obsessed with Japan. I have no idea why, but she liked to practice her Japanese in the house so it was the first foreign language she taught me after Italian. Why?"

"I'll need you to help Chikusa and Ken with it. I've already taught them the basics, but if they sit around correcting each other's pronunciation while I'm not around it'll all just go to hell. You should hear their English, it's abominable."

"Fine, I'll work with them on it. But why are you having them learn Japanese?"

"I'm pretty sure that I don't pay you to ask questions."

"I ask questions for free, if you want less questions then feel free to pay me for the privilege," M.M. replied. "Do they mind that you use them as people suits?"

Mukuro, currently wearing the always-stylish Chikusa, shrugged carelessly. "I don't see how that could possibly matter to you."

"It doesn't, I was just curious."

"Well, I suppose you know what they say about curiosity?"

"I suppose I do," M.M. replied, rolling her eyes.

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
SON SERVICES  
TRADITORE  
NOVEMBER 21

**BIRDS**

Birds had always considered himself a man of refined and particular tastes. He'd lived a long and colorful life and, in his twilight years, he felt he deserved to enjoy the finer things. And there was nothing, nothing, quite as fine as the look on a child's face when they realized they were looking death in the face. Or the exquisite torment that contorted every inch of a young body as something they loved was ripped from them.

That look of utter hopelessness in the face of a tragedy that they could not stop, that they could not turn aside. He shuddered as the imagined thrill of such an expression slid through him and he licked his lips, savoring the taste of one particularly vivid memory from his assassination days. He'd spent days constructing the scenario, a Rube Goldberg machine of magnificent proportions, setting those proverbial dominoes in place for that one moment of perfection as she was caught effortless in the revolving door at the entrance at LAX unable to do anything but scream and bang on the glass as her lover balanced on the edge of the roof of the parking structure, a tightening cord strangling the life from him as he tried to keep his balance convinced as he was that her life was in his hands, that if he managed to survive a full five minutes she would be saved. The despair on his face as he fell, as he realized that he had been played had been phenomenal, but it had been nothing compared to hers. Listening to his sobbing apologies piped in through the airport speakers, aware that it was all a ploy, but unable to tell him, to warn him, unable to do anything more than watch as he plummeted to his death, as his head burst against the concrete like an overripe melon.

He had watched it all on his monitors, the beauty and the majesty of it as seen from multiple angles. Her face, the perfect despair of it, had been his crowning glory, the pinnacle of his long career. He'd collected his payment for the job from her husband gladly, but that had really been a mere formality. He wasn't in it for the money, he wasn't such a lowbrow hack as to value himself and his work simply by the money he was paid for a job well done. His prices were high but fair considering his mastery of the art of devastation, his devotion to the study and implementation of the macabre in each kill. He was an artist of wickedness and brutality and the whole of the mafia world was his canvas and pain and horror the instruments of his trade.

He smiled and wiped at the blood that dripped from his nose with a casual thumb. It had been a while since he'd been quite this excited. When he was young, if he'd ever gone more than a few hours without a thrill which had been rare for he'd been in much demand when he was young, all he had to do was fish into his collection and he could relive some of his most creative and triumphant moments. There was nothing quite like the exhilaration of a live kill, of seeing those expressions in person from inches away, but he never regretted the day he'd decided to begin recording his masterpieces.

How many lazy days between jobs had he spent whiling away the hours with those precious memories? How many nights had he fallen into a satisfied sleep exhausted and smiling? The lingering image of his own savagery displayed on his screen above the bed he had painted well with his orgasmic leavings? Certainly many, but never enough for he never stopped craving those exquisite sights and sounds. The heart-pounding joy those moments brought him.

He still had his fun, of course, even at his advanced age. Life was only truly worth living, after all, if you were enjoying yourself. It was the reason, after all, that he had been imprisoned. He had spent enormous time and effort in the creation of the twins, those living monuments to his depravity, before he'd set them upon a Famiglia based in Barcelona. They had performed admirably, beyond his wildest expectations, but it would seem neither the mafia nor the Vindice had approved of his efforts. Everyone was a critic, it seemed. So, he had been imprisoned along with his fine and beautiful creations though they had been banished to solitary and locked in chains while he had been given the luxury of a standard imprisonment in Traditore.

Five years he'd been here. It had given him time to establish himself, to earn the trust of the guards and the governing body and that had allowed him certain extravagances not permitted for other, lesser, prisoners. He'd always kept birds, using them as his spies and messengers all his life, and he was surprised and pleased when his jailers had allowed him to continue to pursue his hobby even within the confines of Traditore. The birds were all fine and well and caring for them did give him something to do with his abundant spare time that didn't result in weekly visits to the box, but the best thing about it was that it gave him leave to continue his business.

Traditore was positively filled to the brim with people who were well and truly hated by someone. He did a small but lucrative business arranging accidents and the occasional outright murder for exterior clients. When the request required an indirect approach, which admittedly wasn't often as most people wanted the person to see it coming and understand why it came, he usually took care of it personally as a way to keep his hand in. The more usual type of request he passed off in turn to a network of trusted operatives who did the work for him though he often made it a point to turn up for the actual act because he enjoyed watching those expressions.

This request, however…

This was something special…

He swiped at his nose again and wiped sweaty palms against his prison issue pants before reading the missive again.

Oh, yes. He was going to enjoy this very much. He'd had his eye on those boys since they'd arrived. It had been unfortunate that the one had been gone too quickly off to Solitary where he couldn't be easily reached or seen, but the other two…. The other two were magnificent. He might have even begun playing with them sooner if the management hadn't seen fit to room them with M.M..

His rule of thumb when it came to dealing with rival assassins was generally simply not to. M.M., for all that she was a lovely young girl and would likely have simply marvelous expressions, if he could just find the right buttons to push, had a very impressive reputation for close-range combat and that was one area in which he was not gifted. She'd made a point of beating one prisoner to death with a lunch tray shortly after she'd arrived. It had only taken her three measured swings before he'd dropped like a rock and she'd set the bloody tray down gently on the table before allowing the guards to cuff her and haul her off to the box without a fight. No, he was not foolish enough to challenge M.M. directly especially not in regards to something she valued. And he felt it would be perceived as a personal challenge as he'd seen her speaking and smiling with them on several occasions. Her presence complicated the issue, certainly, but it was not an insurmountable obstacle, merely an inconvenient one.

An obstacle he hadn't been willing to attempt to bypass simply for his own gratification even though his palms itched with desire whenever he saw those two together, leaning so close, fingers touching and lingering as if they were lovers though he didn't think that was quite the case. Either way, their dependence and devotion to each was palpable and when he thought of the torment they would feel if something unfortunate were to happen to one of them… well… that was enough to kindle and stoke the fires of his desire. On its own, that hadn't been quite enough to incite him to action. Once the added bonus of a monetary reward came into play, however, that had been more than enough to push him over the edge.

He could see the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind. He would need to tread carefully, of course, being sure to test the waters and throw suspicion elsewhere if he wished to survive the encounter, he was well aware that the boys were dangerous in their own right even if they didn't have the reputation to back it that M.M. did. It was rare that a client would pay so much or make such specific requests in regards to a weak opponent, after all. Still, the pay off would be quite something and he was interested to see whether the intended message could be conveyed properly. There were, after all, several things about the request that seemed strange and he quite liked the taste of inevitable peril that came with fulfilling a request for which he could not quite see and account for all the variables.

He licked blood from his lips, the taste of copper sweeter than wine and lay back on his bunk, unsnapping his pants. It wouldn't do to start planning in earnest while he was distracted by baser instincts. He wanted a clear head to begin with so he could properly savor this, as one might a fine meal.

He was getting on in years, after all, and it was rare that such perfect victims walked through the doors of Traditore. There was simply no telling when or if such an opportunity would arise again.

**NOTES:**

As usual, I include fairly extensive notes for each chapter when I post it to Archive of Our Own (link is in my profile, I do believe) so you can check them out there if you're interested since they're a bit too long to post here, generally.) Comments are always very much appreciated. Thanks for reading. :)


	8. The Spider's Web

_"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it."_  
― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

**-ooo-  
NOW**

VONGOLA  
NAMIMORI  
January 7, 2003

**TSUNAYOSHI**

Tsunayoshi breathed a huge sigh of relief as he realized that, for the first time in a long time, he was actually alone. Before Reborn had shown up in his life and declared him to be the tenth boss in training he had almost always been alone. His entire life had been like a bad joke. He'd been terrible at everything and no one wanted to be around him and no one but his mother probably would have missed him if he'd been gone.

Now, everything was different and, most of the time, if you left aside the crazy dangerous things and the violence and the embarrassment of constantly waking up to find he'd done something totally nuts dressed only in his underwear, it was actually really… fun. But sometimes, even leaving that aside, it was a lot to get used to. Gokudera was pretty great, but… he was also a LOT of work. He was terrifying most of the time and he had a bad temper and he got really violent sometimes and he was so smart, so crazy, crazy smart, even if he didn't act like it sometimes. Sometimes… sometimes he was afraid Gokudera would really hear him when he told him he didn't want to be Vongola's Boss. That he'd hear him and understand that he'd never be his right hand man or whatever and then he'd wake up one day and Gokudera would be gone, would just disappear from his life as quickly as he'd appeared in it and… he didn't want that. He didn't to be a mafia boss, but… sometimes he could feel these friendships and connections bricking him into the role, weighing him down, as unavoidable as gravity. And he wondered if that wasn't Reborn's intention all along. If he wasn't building a family for him from friends and all these scary, wonderful people for the express purpose of making it impossible to refuse the role he was meant to accept.

Yamamoto was simpler, but also _harder_ to understand in some ways. He'd known of Yamamoto for years, but knowing _of_ someone and really _knowing_ them were, Tsunayoshi was discovering, two very different things. Yamamoto was completely different than he'd thought he'd be, not that he'd ever given it all that much thought. The best thing about Yamamoto, he thought after over a year of tentative, surprising friendship, was that Yamamoto didn't make him feel stupid, because he was just as bad at test taking as Tsunayoshi himself. He often acted like he thought the whole mafia thing was a game though, so that was kind of scary in itself and it made him feel… kind of bad, sometimes, like he was getting away with something at Yamamoto's expense. Like he was stealing his friendship under false pretenses or something. His problem with Yamamoto was almost the exact opposite of his problem with Gokudera. Where with Gokudera he was afraid he'd wake up one day and realize the mafia thing wasn't going to happen, he was equally scared that Yamamoto would realize one day that all those games weren't games at all. That the violence and the danger and the explosions were all real and he wouldn't want any part in any of it, wouldn't even want to be his friend because Tsunayoshi hadn't made more of an effort to tell him. Sure, Yamamoto had been happy to jump some yakuza when he'd thought he'd been kidnapped that one time, but… it still felt like cheating whenever Yamamoto laughed off the scary things that happened around them.

Kyouko's older brother was just really intense and intimidating. Of course, that was really as much because of how passionate he was about everything as it was because he was _Kyouko's_ older brother. They didn't really look much alike, but he'd noticed they both had the same sunny smile and while her older brother's smile didn't make him feel warm and nervous the same way hers did, it was still a nice sort of smile. It made him glad that Kyouko's brother seemed to like him. Even if he did find is enthusiasm really overwhelming sometimes and he really wasn't completely certain _why_ he liked him exactly.

Hibari, by contrast, was simple to understand. He was frightening, of course, Hibari was a really tough, ruthless, intimidating sort of guy, but for all that he still didn't find Hibari terrifying the way he found Bianchi or even Gokudera terrifying. He'd thought about that a lot in the weeks since he'd first met him and he thought he even kind of understood why.

Hibari didn't seem to like him at all, but not in a mean way just… he didn't seem to have much of an opinion about him either way really. Instead, he seemed to regard him the way a hunter might regard some sort of small animal in the wild, a vague curiosity at best that was only truly interesting in how it could be used to draw the interest of larger more dangerous prey. He was pretty sure that Hibari's entire interest in him and why he showed up from time to time had nothing to do with him at all and everything to do with Reborn. Hibari was just so very much _not_ his friend, wasn't even the slightest bit interested being a part of the family Reborn was trying to build for him and that at least was something Tsunayoshi could understand.

For the most part, Hibari was just this strange solitary presence that drifted along at the edge of all the crazy things that happened in his school life. He was just _there_ and he always seemed to be too busy making his own fun to be particularly bothered by the presence of crazy assassins or explosions or any of the other strange things that happened. Of course, usually his idea of fun seemed to involve lots of people getting their teeth kicked in so maybe all that other stuff just seemed normal to him. Tsunayoshi was honestly just glad it wasn't usually him on the wrong end of the beatings Hibari dealt out.

He still wasn't quite sure what to do with the fact that Hibari had been perfectly fine with the idea of disposing of a body. That didn't seem like the sort of thing that a normal person would just be fine with and yet he'd treated it like it was the sort of thing that he did all the time. He'd even seemed to already have a system in place within the disciplinary committee for handling such situations. He kind of wondered what that said about Hibari and what kind of person he was. He didn't think Hibari was a bad person, he didn't really think any of the strange people he'd met and had begun seeing around since Reborn had shown up were really _bad_ people. Weird though. They were definitely all super weird, but weird wasn't always the same as _bad_.

Well… except in the case of Bianchi maybe.

She was literally the most frightening person on the planet and sometimes he couldn't get to sleep thinking about the fact that she was staying in the spare room just down the hall. He figured at some point he'd go to sleep and just never wake up because she'd finally had enough of waiting or trying to assassinate him with her poison cooking and instead just grabbed a gun and shot him while he lay there defenseless one night. He couldn't even begin to understand how Gokudera had survived an entire childhood with her. He'd even asked him about it once, a couple of weeks ago when it was just the two of them hanging out after school because Yamamoto had needed to go home in a hurry to help out his dad at the restaurant, and he still didn't understand it.

Gokudera had insisted on walking him home that day, something about it being the job of a right hand man to watch over his boss and make sure he got home safely. He really hadn't been listening, because sometimes it was just easier to go along with Gokudera's whims than argue. So they'd been walking huddled close because it was December and colder than usual in the way it got sometimes as it got closer to the New Year and they'd gone by the park because the main road had been closed for construction and, even though it was cold, he'd found himself wandering in to sit on the swings. Gokudera had just come in with him and plopped down in the swing to his right without questioning it at all and it had been really… nice. He hadn't even complained about it being too cold or anything, he'd just lit up another cigarette and taken a long drag, using his long legs to push himself back and forth in the swing.

"I used to come here a lot when I was really small," Tsunayoshi had confessed and he thought about telling him more than that. About telling him why, maybe, but in the end he'd just left it like that. He still wasn't super comfortable talking about himself with them, still half expected to be the object of ridicule even if Gokudera had never been anything but almost frighteningly nice to him since they'd become friends. He still didn't really know anything much about him except that he was obsessed with the idea of being his right hand man (which he didn't even pretend to understand), liked explosives way too much and that his sister was even scarier than he was. And he thought that that was probably part of the reason everything was always a little strange when it was just the two of them without Yamamoto's easy laughter to ease the way. Yamamoto always seemed open and uncomplicated and casual in a way neither of them could ever manage to be on their own.

Gokudera nodded, mostly to himself, or so it seemed, "It's nice here."

"Yeah," Tsunayoshi replied, leaning back in his swing to stare up into the cloudy grey-blue sky. "Is it hard living on your own?"

"Nah, I'm used to it. I was on my own for a while before I moved here, after all."

"You didn't live with Bianchi?"

"I did when I was little," Gokudera hesitated, like he wanted to say more, but in the end he just kind of shrugged, taking a quick drag off his cigarette. "It's a really boring story, Tenth."

"Oh, yeah, okay," Tsunayoshi replied awkwardly, because the last thing he wanted was to push Gokudera to talk about something he didn't want to talk about, but… when Gokudera said things like that it always reminded how fragile their friendship probably was. Not that he really understood what a strong friendship really entailed since Gokudera had really kind of been his very first friend.

"I…" Gokudera began, scowling at nothing and everything, cigarette clapped between his lips. He was silent for a really long time, just glowering at the merry-go-round and the slide and probably scaring the squirrels away. Tsunayoshi thought about breaking the silence, but he couldn't think of anything to say that didn't scream of desperation so he just sat there, swinging his legs back and forth and waiting to see if maybe Gokudera would finish his thought. In the end, minutes passed and Gokudera's cigarette burned down to the filter. He cursed softly as it burned his lip and tossed butt down, crushing it under his heel before touching a finger to his lip gingerly.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, it's nothing, Tenth."

"Right, okay."

"You can ask me things. If you want to... about before," Gokudera said, hesitantly, pointedly staring down at the sand as he spoke. His voice was quiet, quieter than Tsunayoshi had ever heard it. Usually Gokudera was all bravado and fire. He shouted a lot and even when he didn't, he was usually loud and assertive like he wanted to make himself impossible to ignore or disregard. "You don't have to, but you can. If you want to."

"Oh, um, okay," Tsunayoshi replied, swallowing hard and kind of feeling like an enormous weight had been dropped onto his shoulders. Like if he didn't ask anything or the right things he'd be letting Gokudera down somehow. He wasn't sure if that was really true, but it felt like it might be and that was kind of terrifying in its own right. "You, um, grew up in the mafia?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, okay."

So awkward.

So, so, so _awkward_.

"My father is the head of a small Famiglia, the Aquila. We're only second generation, so we're mostly in trade and wet work. That's how a lot of Famiglia get their start these days."

"But if your Dad's the head of the family wouldn't you be…" Tsunayoshi trailed off, uncertain how to ask or even if he should. He still didn't understand how any of this mafia stuff really worked. He didn't really want to either. Like understanding it would mean he was interested and Reborn would be able to look at that and say 'ah ha!' and somehow use that interest to trap him into the position of Boss. For all he knew, maybe that was how Bosses were confirmed even if it wasn't how they were chosen. When it came to how Bosses were chosen he was pretty certain that he at least had been chosen by picking names out of a hat no matter what Reborn said about it. He couldn't think of any other reason he'd be chosen for anything really.

"Nah," Gokudera replied quickly, shaking his head violently and fumbling into his pocket for his crumpled cigarette packet. "I'm not… I left all that behind a long time ago. Besides, I wouldn't have been the next Boss anyway even if… I mean, that is, it would always have been her."

"Right, so Bianchi…?"

"Yeah," he shook a cigarette from the packet and balanced it on his burned lip as he fished about for his lighter. "She's been moonlighting as an assassin for years, but someday she'll definitely be asked to settle down and become the head of the Famiglia."

"Huh," Tsunayoshi exhaled heavily, breath white in the cooling afternoon air. He just couldn't think of anything scarier in the whole world than Bianchi in charge of people the way Dino was. He'd be so, so, so dead. "That's a really scary thought."

"Right?" Gokudera laughed, lighting his cigarette and taking a long pull before blowing the smoke back out and shaking his head. "No way I was sticking around and getting stuck working for her. She'll probably make them all eat her cooking every day. I'd want to fucking die."

"You probably _would_ die from that," Tsunayoshi shuddered. "I don't know how you got through years of eating it."

"Yeah, me neither."

They sat in silence for a while each reflecting privately on the horrors that Bianchi perpetrated in the kitchen.

"I mean just… why? Why poison cooking? It just seems like a really terrible skill right? Do you think it was accidental the first time?"

"Hell, I don't know, probably. But most people would eventually stop fucking doing it, right? That's my sister for you though. Say anything you want about her, but she's not a quitter."

"Well, that's true, I guess. She's been trying to kill me all year and I don't think she's planning on quitting that anytime soon either."

"Probably not. Sorry, Tenth."

"Why are you sorry?"

"Eh, I don't know. Just seemed like I should apologize."

"Well, it's not your fault."

"You're the most gracious guy, Tenth! Taking the time to console me when my sister is the one trying to take your life! You're really the best! I'm definitely going to prove myself worthy of being your right hand man!"

Tsunayoshi sighed, realizing that the strange quiet interlude was over and Gokudera was determinably back on the 'right hand man' campaign wagon.

They'd left the park shortly after that and walked home. It had been weird, but nice like a sneak peek at what friendship what Gokudera might look like without the mafia thing hanging awkwardly between them. The rest of the walk home hadn't been the least bit quiet because it hadn't been long at all before Haru had shown up out of nowhere spouting off some kind of crazy stuff about the kids and being a mafia wife and… he had tuned it out after a while because she'd gotten in a fight with Gokudera over something and then Lambo had shown up and started screaming something about candy and Gokudera had tossed him over a fence when he'd pulled out a grenade and it had been all the typical craziness. All that had been missing really had been Reborn shooting or throwing things at him.

And then, of course, they'd finally gotten home and Bianchi had been there and Gokudera had ended up crawling right back out again, shouting apologies over his shoulder. He wondered again how the hell it was that Bianchi had ended up living in his guest room in the first place and why his mother had so blithely accepted the presence of not only Reborn, but Bianchi and Lambo and even I-Pin into their daily lives. He wondered sometimes if there wasn't something wrong with her, because she didn't seem to have any idea about the mafia thing and yet she was just so willing to accept what to anyone else would have been these incredibly weird, outrageous developments as commonplace.

Sometimes he wanted to talk to her about it. To sit down with her and ask what she was thinking allowing her only son to be trained to be a mafia boss, but… he didn't want to panic her if she didn't know about that part of it. He wasn't entirely certain what would happen if she knew. The last thing he wanted was to worry her, but… he really, really, really wanted to know why she'd accepted the idea of a toddler tutor like that was a completely normal, rational thing. Why she seemed just totally fine with Lambo and all his crazy, with Bianchi and all her crazy poison cooking stuff, I-Pin being just… I-Pin, Dino showing up with all those incredibly obvious mafia guys and just… all the other bizarre things that had been happening since Reborn had come to be his tutor. How it was that all of that strangeness didn't even seem to register with her at all.

But, most of all, he wanted to ask her the things he'd always wanted to know. Why did she marry his father? Why did she love him? What the hell had been so great about that loser that she'd want to have a kid with him? Why couldn't they just have a normal life? What had happened to him? How were they getting by without him? Because Mom had never had a job, but she never seemed to worry about money or having all those extra mouths to feed so sometimes, late at night when he was trying to fall asleep and nothing was working, he looked over at Reborn and he wondered. He wondered if it was because of the mafia that they were able to live like they did.

In the bright light of day he knew that was stupid and his Dad had just probably had a really big life insurance policy or something, but… he was still afraid to ask. Afraid of what the answers to all those questions would be or, worse somehow, that his Mom would just give him that blank look like she didn't understand the question and his heart would sink into the vicinity of his stomach and he would finally _know_ that she wasn't… that something was really, really wrong with her. And that scared him more than anything else. So, maybe… maybe it was better that nothing had ever made any sense. Maybe he could live with that… for a while longer at least.

His life was so weirdly complicated now.

Not that he ever _really_ wanted to go back to the simpler days when he'd just been No-Good Tsuna and he'd had no friends and been awful at everything and no one had believed in him at all. He still felt stupid and he still sucked at just about everything, but he didn't mind so much now at least. His grades had even improved a little bit. Well, some of them had anyway. Most of all he didn't dread going to school anymore because– even if he still failed most his tests and rarely understood what the instructor was talking about- he still got to see Kyouko every day and have lunch with Gokudera and Yamamoto. Plus, the days were never boring since he could never tell when some new mafia related craziness was going to happen, but even that wasn't all bad.

The best thing to come out of all of this, of course, was his new almost, sort of, kind of friendship with Kyouko. She noticed him now, she talked to him and sometimes she even came over with Reborn or Lambo or I-Pin or Haru and it was… _amazing_. It had seemed like he'd spent years loving her from afar and now, now he was beginning to get to know her a little and she was nice and kind and everything he'd thought she was and imagined she was for so long.

The worst thing was… he was never quite sure why Gokudera and Yamamoto and Kyouko and Haru and the rest actually liked being around him or if they even really did. Sometimes he thought he'd wake up and find that none of this had been real at all. That there was no Reborn and he'd just dreamed up Gokudera and he'd never spoken to Yamamoto or Kyouko. That everything from the day Reborn had appeared in his house had all just been one very long, very weird dream.

And if that were the case… he kind of hoped he never woke up.

**-ooo-**

**NOW**

THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 12

**KEN**

"India was crazy hot. I mean, seriously, it was like living on the surface of the fucking sun. And I guess he knew it was gonna be like that, so Mukuro found us this nice place with air conditioning, you know, because none of us were really used to that kind of heat. The problem was that we got there during the middle of winter and so no one even bothered to turn on the air conditioner until it started getting really hot, because, I mean, why would you, right? So, anyway, Mukuro goes to turn it on and nothing happens. Mukuro's jabbing the buttons and glaring at it like maybe he can make it work just by disapproving of it hard enough and Lancia's already calling the person we were renting from to bitch about it and I'm laughing my ass off because I can hear the damn thing grinding away trying to turn on. So, like three or four hours later the damn thing still isn't working and Lancia's still trying to get up with the landlord and we're all sweating fucking buckets. We've got the windows open and the fans on, but that isn't helping at all. So, then the delivery guy shows up with our lunch and makes a comment about how hot it is in the apartment, like maybe we just have no damn idea, right? So, Mukuro takes the food from him, calm as you please, and then this woman shows up out of fucking nowhere with this big damn bucket of ice water and just dumps the entire thing over the delivery guy's head. And Mukuro's just standing there holding the food and staring at him as if that sort of thing just happens all the time. And Chikusa falls off his chair and I'm laughing my ass off and Lancia is just rolling his eyes like he's embarrassed to fucking know us, but he's smiling so you can tell he thinks it's funny too and the delivery guy is just standing there with his shoulders all bunched up around his ears, breathing hard, obviously still in shock. And after a minute Mukuro hands the man the cash to pay for the delivery and this guy is just sopping wet and he takes the money and looks at it and then looks back at Mukuro like he's got to be joking and says, 'No tip?' Like maybe Mukuro had just forgotten or something and then Mukuro says, 'Don't complain about the heat to a man standing in an oven.' And shuts the door in his face."

M.M. chuckled, "Mukuro's kind of an jerk, isn't he?"

"He really is," Ken replied, grinning broadly. "You're gonna really like him. He's the best."

"You realize that I've met him a couple times now, right?"

"Yeah, but that was mostly business, right? He's different once he gets to know you. Oh, and Lancia. He's supposed to get out of infirmary soon, I think, _finally_. You're totally gonna like Lancia. He's like Mukuro's Gal Friday."

"You realize that the chief requirement of being a 'Gal Friday' is being a girl, right?"

"Huh? Is it? Oh. Well, he isn't a girl. He's just, you know, the guy who takes care of stuff for him, he looks out for us too. He's also the person we're supposed to say is Mukuro Rokudo. So, you know, there's that, but you don't have to call him Mukuro. That'd just get confusing after a while. Everybody knows he has another name anyway so no one seems to find it weird that he call him Lancia instead of Mukuro all the time."

"So it's just Lancia? Like Madonna?"

"Nah, um, I think it's um… hey Chikusa, what's Lancia's last name?"

"…Salvatore," Chikusa murmured, glancing up from where he was shifting about and checking the needles he typically wore under his skin. He smelled faintly of blood and poison and it was such a nostalgic scent that Ken was kind of tempted to go curl up with him and put his head in his lap, but he knew that him being close like that made Chikusa nervous when he was messing about with poisons. Even though they both knew that poison probably wouldn't hurt him any at all.

"Salvatore? Seriously? Lancia Salvatore? Like Cacciatore's Lancia Salvatore?"

"Why does everyone always say it like that?" Ken commented, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I mean he's our Lancia Salvatore, you know, not Cacciatore's, but I guess, yeah, he was in Cacciatore before that."

M.M. frowned, leaning back against the cell wall. "The reason everyone says it like that is he's famous. Well, infamous is probably a better way to describe it. He's the strongest man in Northern Italy. My father once got into a dispute with the Cacciatore over some piece of land near their territory. He wanted it to expand one of his underground transport routes, they had it, and my father wasn't exactly known for asking nicely. He had one of his men go over and harass the lieutenant of the Cacciatore who was in charge of that area, break a knee or two, nothing too serious. Two days later, a man named Lancia showed up in my father's business office in the area. When he left there was nothing left of the office but a pile of rumble and a heap of broken, bleeding people bearing the warning 'do not think to harm the Cacciatore'. Then the boss of the Cacciatore sent him a note apologizing for his bodyguard's behavior saying Lancia always gets a bit overzealous when it comes to defending his family. So, my father kind of shrugged it off and took the apology as a sign of weakness and went on trying. He tried twice more to move against the Cacciatore and ended up with similar results each time. Finally he gave up the expansion as a bad job and moved on. He'd never done that before."

Ken shrugged, "Yeah, that sounds like something Lancia would do. He's pretty amazing that way."

"Yeah, I'll bet. So, my question is: how the hell do you have Lancia of Cacciatore working for you? When you're loyal like that, you don't just wake up one morning and decide you're going to murder your Famiglia and run off to join a gang with a bunch of twelve-year-olds."

"Hey, I'm fourteen you know."

"So am I and I don't care how old you are, the point stands."

Ken scratched the back of his head, a little nervous. He hadn't thought about having to explain Lancia. The truth sounded really, really bad.

"Mukuro pays really well," Chikusa interjected, saving him from his big mouth.

"I suppose he does," M.M. replied, still frowning like she didn't buy that that was anything close to the full story. "Well, whatever. I guess it'll make it a lot easier to get out of here working with someone like that. He could probably just rip the bars clean off."

"Yeah, pretty much," Ken shrugged, grinning. "He can throw me about twenty feet in the air."

M.M. scoffed, leaning forward to poke him in the chest, "Big deal. You weigh what? Three stone soaking wet? You're tiny."

"You'd be surprised. I'm heavier than I look."

"Inmates!"

Ken winced, slapping his hands over his ears as the guard's exclamation was followed by the heavy ringing sound of the guard rapping his baton against their cell door. Pain rang through his skull in time with the beats of that stick against the bars, loud and echoing within the relative quiet of their cell. He was pretty sure the guard was telling them it was time for lights out, but he couldn't hear it over the ringing in his ears. Beside him he could feel M's hands settle against his side, giving him a push in the direction of his own bed. He hopped obligingly off M's bed and hurried across the room to his own bunk, turning his face away from the guard at the gate so he could yank the cartridge from his mouth. The pain lessened immediately from a dull roar to a mild ache and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Of course, with his fucking luck it would just end up triggering another headache. Seemed like he had no end of fucking headaches lately. He wasn't sure if it was because of all the noise or the cartridges or not really sleeping a whole lot or what. Whatever it was, he was wearing on his last fucking nerve.

**-ooo-**

"Mm, you still smell like cyanide," Ken murmured, snuggling down under their shitty blankets. It was cold at night lately, like the heat was malfunctioning or something, and it made him drowsier at the same time everything else about the stupid place kept him too wound up to actually fall asleep. But the cold and cuddling up with Chikusa under those blankets reminded him so much of being little kids that it was comfortable and easy to just kind of zone out and drift even if he wasn't able to really sleep much.

The winter that Mukuro had been with the Cacciatore, it had just been the two of them most of the time. Long, dark nights when they'd curl up at night in their tent beneath all the blankets and fluffy comforters that Mukuro stole for them and they'd huddle together for warmth and still be fucking freezing half the time. The days weren't much better, even when the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and warmed the cold air or melted the snow that was piling up outside a little. He remembered stiff limbs and watering eyes and a nose that seemed to run all day every day, how his nose hairs had frozen and crackled when he was out there too long or too often.

Some days were so cold that they'd just stay in the tent all day too, only going out if they had to take a piss or something. They'd eat soup out of cans or packets of crisps or something like that. They'd bundle up in layers of clothes they'd picked up different places and they'd both be wearing big ugly knitted hats and sometimes they had gloves, but not that year. That year they'd cut the fingers off some of the old ones so they could wear them and still be able to play cards or so Chikusa could read the cheap paperbacks and comics they'd picked up in Lucca. He'd always read them out loud so Ken could enjoy them too. Most of those cold winter days though, they'd pull the blankets up over their heads so they were just locked together in this little pocket of warm space and it was like their own private world and sometimes they'd flip on a flashlight so they could play go fish or something with a ragged set of cards they'd picked up at one of the first houses they'd stayed in. The deck was missing three of the twos and a couple of sevens, but it didn't much matter for just playing simple games.

Some nights Mukuro would show up unexpectedly, breathing hard from running, his cheeks red from the cold, wearing a big puffy jacket and a red hat pulled down over his ears. He would always show up well after dark, usually past midnight, and fall shivering into the tent between them.

Those were the best nights. Even though Mukuro never really slept or said why he'd come and he was always gone in the morning as if he'd never been there at all. He'd usually leave behind some new bag of food or something, but Ken kind of thought that was mostly just an excuse and that even Mukuro got lonely sometimes. That eventually became the reason they were camped out so close to the Cacciatore property most of the time he was there. They talked about it during the first couple of months and they'd both agreed it had been worth the discomfort to stay close. They both felt better knowing Mukuro was nearby even if they only rarely saw him. Sometimes it just wasn't possible because they had something else they were supposed to be doing, some other assignment, but most of the time he left them to their own devices and he didn't really seem to mind their presence at all so that had been good enough for them.

It was during that year that he'd really gotten good at using the cartridges and Chikusa had started using poisons to coat his needles. Not that he needed the poison to be deadly, he didn't, but he said that it allowed him greater versatility. Said he might as well make use of the fact that he was immune to that sort of thing. They'd become better killers on warm spring afternoons in that forest and things had been so much simpler then. Before Lancia and everything that came after, when it was just the two of them, sometimes the three of them, learning how to turn the things Esterneo had done to them into strengths.

"Sorry," Chikusa commented, brushing Ken's hair from his face. It was getting too long again so it was a good thing Lancia was coming back soon. Chikusa would probably cut it for him if he asked, but Chikusa pulled it whenever he fidgeted too much whereas Lancia just pinned his head in place which was way easier and less painful to boot.

"Nah, I like it. Between that and the ricin it makes you smell like almond yogurt. It's strong enough that it makes it tougher to smell other things," Ken replied, snagging Chikusa's arm and bringing it up to his face. "I'd much rather smell you than M.M.'s perfume or the guard's B.O. or whatever." The scent clung to his skin along with the faint scent of blood. This was familiar too. He hadn't known what those smells meant when they were in the room, but Chikusa had told him about what he'd read in his file later. About experiments with ricin and cyanide and batrachotoxin, all words he'd made Chikusa repeat again and again until he knew them by heart. The names of the poisons that could have killed him but hadn't. That had changed his body chemistry so much that the scent of them would forever linger in his blood, on his skin. Those poisons that were how he was able to wear and handle poison filled or coated needles without worrying that he'd kill himself with them.

He'd made Chikusa read him the folder front to back over and over again during those first months they were all together and free even though none of it had ever really made sense to him. But then he wasn't some fucked up mad science nut that got his rocks off experimenting on kids. So maybe there was some fucked up logic to making a kid invulnerable to poison and then drilling into his skull and operating on his brain that he just wasn't _capable_ of understanding.

"It's nice," he commented finally, pressing his lips against the inside of his wrist before letting it go.

"You're so full of it," Chikusa mumbled, taking his arm back, but he could see the flush across Chikusa's pale cheeks even in the dark and it made him smile and press in closer until he could bury his face against his shoulder.

"Am not. I love this smell. It's my favorite smell," he replied honestly, because it was. It had been his favorite smell since the very beginning of them. It was funny how sensitive he was to every other damn smell in the world, how most everything bothered the fuck out of him in one way or another, but the smell of poison on Chikusa's skin was like coming home. It probably said something about how nuts he was about Chikusa that he liked that smell. Of course, he'd grown to like the darkness and death smell of Mukuro too. Lancia… pretty much just smelled like everyone else. Maybe a little bit more like leather and soap, but rarely of much else because he'd gone out of his way once he'd realized how sensitive Ken's nose was, even without the cartridge in, to find a neutralizing deodorant. It wasn't really necessary anymore as Ken had adjusted to Lancia's odor a long time ago, but he appreciated the effort anyway. It made him feel special, like Lancia really gave a shit about them because it wasn't something even Mukuro had thought to do before.

"Well, you stink," Chikusa grumbled, his breath stirring Ken's hair as he worked his fingers through the thick tangles. It hurt a little, but it was mostly just nice and Ken sighed, leaning into the pull of those fingers through his hair.

"You just say that because you want to shower with me," he teased, grinning.

"Shut up. Just want you to bathe properly."

"Well, I would if there was a bathtub, but there isn't. Besides, what are you complaining about? Mukuro showered for me last week."

"Last _week_," Chikusa replied, because he was totally fucking weird and would shower like six times a day if they'd let him.

"And yet you're still willing to sleep with me," Ken taunted, grinning widely and pulling Chikusa into a tight hug. "You_ love_ the way I stink."

"Do _not_."

"You totally do. And to honor that I'm not gonna let Mukuro shower for me again for a month."

"Gross, Ken," Chikusa grumbled, wiggling free of Ken's embrace and punching him in the shoulder.

Ken just laughed and grabbed him again, rolling him over and pinning him down until Chikusa's fingers started jabbing at pressure points, forcing him to relent. He ended up facing away from him, tucked against Chikusa's chest and he didn't even mind that his head hurt more than it had to begin with, not really, he was just glad for the weight of Chikusa's arm across his chest and the warmth of him at his back.

**-ooo-**

**NOW**

THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 13

**MUKURO**

It was worse than he thought.

Much worse.

It had taken some digging, but eventually he'd managed to find out when the Vindice had discovered the slaughter at the Esterneo compound. It wasn't really surprising that it had been only three days after they had left New York; he'd almost been expecting it really. What was surprising was that despite his best efforts he hadn't been able to discover how exactly they'd found out about it beyond the vague 'tip' comment he'd gotten when they'd first told him they knew they were from Esterneo. So, it had absolutely been retaliation and they- whoever the hell _they_ actually were- had almost certainly been hiding the compound up until that point. And that meant they had an illusionist of their own, someone far more impressive than the one they'd used to guide him to New York if they'd been able to keep all that flagrant law breaking from being discovered by the Vindice, or anyone else for that matter, for so many years.

What bothered him the most though was that he didn't understand _why_. Why _bother_? What the hell was the point? Why conceal it, why reveal it? What did _they_ have to gain? All he knew was that they had led the mafia to them by the nose. Just as someone had tipped off the Vindice about the compound, someone (probably that same someone) had urged the Council to look at Traditore for survivors, encouraged them to look at children and the rest would have been simple. They were prisoners with no right to refuse if someone were to wish to take blood or fingerprints and they'd all bled and bled at Esterneo. Even he had bled there and they couldn't help but have touched things. Even if he'd had the presence of mind to wipe clear their fingerprints he'd have only known where to start with his. When he was the boy he'd been before, he could have gone anywhere, touched anything, and he'd never have known for certain.

That room on the top floor would have probably been positively lousy with them. He would have had to burn the entire place to the ground to cover their tracks completely. Probably should have, but it had simply never occurred to him, not until months later. He had been tired and newly minted and cripplingly naive in so many ways and too worldly by far in others. Besides, he wasn't certain he could have ever even found the place again even if he'd been inclined to go back. Even now he had only a very vague idea where the building stood. He highly doubted either Ken or Chikusa had any better idea of the location than he did and even if they had… it had always seemed as great a risk to return as it had been to leave things as they stood. And knowing what he knew now, he was quite certain that if they had been able or inclined to return they would not have enjoyed the welcome they would have received.

No, he might not understand the purpose or the goal, but he understood well enough that they were expected to remain players in this whatever stupid game they were playing so long as they allowed themselves to remain within Traditore.

And so there was the plan. The plan that was, as yet, not so much a plan as it was just a desperate, half-formed gambit cobbled together from guesses and assumptions and bits of information and a compulsive need to run.

Japan.

Vongola's successor.

It was probably a stupid plan.

It was probably going to get them all killed, but at least they'd go down fighting on their own terms. At least they wouldn't die trapped in the mousetrap that was Traditore, because that's what they'd turned Traditore into for them, he was quite certain of that. He'd thought about it a lot since that day and he had no doubt they were all going to pay for his refusal to play along and eventually allow himself to be dragged off to Vendicare without a fight. The best he could do was free them from it before anyone had a chance to set it off.

He reached out for Chikusa and found only the soft vague feeling of his dreams. He could have gone deeper, maybe, slipped into them. He'd been practicing that with strangers for a while, but it only really worked well with people he was compatible with, people with a will similar to his own and while he and Chikusa were more compatible than he and Lancia or Ken, it would still be challenging.

He reached out for Ken instead and found him awake.

Awake, but still sleepy and cozily bundled in against Chikusa as they still had an hour, maybe two, before he'd need to drop down to his own bunk before the guard came by for his check at three hundred hours. He didn't sleep much even with Chikusa at his back, his senses too oversensitive to ever allow him more than a light doze even with the real illusion ear plugs he'd created for him tucked snugly in his ears. It had been different before, during their first time in Traditore when all he'd been battling had been some low-grade paranoia and nerves. Now, his senses were operating in constant overload even without the cartridge in and it was slowly eating away at him bit by bit. Ken had gotten decent enough at managing it instinctively, so much so that this morning he was just a little anxious and had only a low-grade headache to contend with. Nothing too severe yet and while he couldn't feel the pain himself he could feel Ken's muzzy thoughts about how annoying it was.

It had taken him a while to figure it out, but New York had been good for a lot of things, not the least of which was discovering that Ken's hyperactive senses caused as many problems as they solved. Most of the time the healing factor took care of the worst of it, healing the damage before Ken could even notice it, but when his system became overwhelmed from wearing the cartridges too often or for too long or by a constant bombardment of overwhelming levels of sense stimulation, his body stopped being able to keep up with the progression of the damage. He'd been anxious and irritable since they'd been brought back to Traditore, but it had been getting dramatically worse over the last month or two. He had difficulty sleeping and seemed to lean more and more on Chikusa for support and comfort. There was virtually nothing Mukuro could do to help as his illusions wouldn't be able to mitigate the damage, just affect Ken's perception of it which seemed like it would cause greater harm than good. Even the ear plugs were a bit of a risk as they made his hearing a little more sensitive whenever he took them back out, but it was a necessary risk. He hadn't slept at all the week he'd finally decided to make them for him. Things weren't much better now, but a little sleep was still preferable to none.

Sometimes he possessed Chikusa just so he could keep an eye on him during the night, watch his labored breathing when he wasn't awake and aware enough to keep it under control. Chikusa would always ask why and he couldn't bring himself to answer. Gave him some bullshit about just wanting to check in and sometimes they talked about the cartridges other effects and he listened to Chikusa fret about his feelings for a bit. The feelings thing was easier to handle with Chikusa who often seemed strangely disconnected from his emotions and spoke about them in vague terms as if he couldn't ever find the words to define them properly. He knew Chikusa had his own worries and concerns about Ken and that had kept him blind and distracted from the larger issue. Hopefully he'd be able to get them out before that larger issue really became a problem. Chikusa was already inadvertently managing the condition by insisting on Ken removing the cartridge at night and as often during the day as he could so it wasn't as bad as it could be, not too terrible that he needed to talk to Ken or Chikusa about it since he couldn't be sure doing so wouldn't simply make it all worse.

_Hey,_ Ken sounded drowsy, but content as he sensed his presence. It was a good sound, a warm feeling. _You okay? You don't usually come to visit this early._

_Just wanted to hear your voice, _he answered, a little surprised to find it wasn't quite a lie. It wasn't the real reason, but it was reason enough. He really did… miss them. And all the research and strategizing had kept him away from them all more than he liked.

_Nightmare?_

_Not exactly, just… I have to do some work so we have a place to go when we leave here so I won't be around for a little while._

_We still going to Japan?_

_That's the plan._

_Think it's nice there?_

_I hope it's safe there,_ Mukuro answered honestly. _M.M. is going to continue to help you with your Japanese while I'm gone. Try not to be terrible._

_Yeah, yeah, _Ken replied, waving off his concerns. _I got it, Mom; I'll do my homework._

Mukuro gave him the prod that comment deserved, enjoying the little jump and the feel of Ken mentally scowling at him. _Hey! No fair poking me when I can't poke you back._

_That's sad for you. I'm dreadfully unfair that way. I am a very bad man after all,_ Mukuro replied, settling back into his own body.

_I hated doing that, you know. _Ken replied, his mood turning suddenly serious. _We both did._

_Hated doing what?_

_Telling them that it was you. Blaming you. Pretending to be scared of you. Making you the bad guy._

_Ah,_ Mukuro replied articulately, uncomfortable as ever with Ken's incessant need to be so… needlessly sentimental. He'd forgotten that he hadn't spoken with Ken much directly since he'd asked them to do that.

_You know that we…_

_I know,_ Mukuro said quickly, feeling panic rise up in his throat. _You know I can't…_

_I know,_ Ken replied, but those warm, adoring, excitable emotions still rose up and buffeted him from all sides. Those wretched emotions that were like Ken's arms around his shoulders, full of such amiable affection, a fondness he'd never known quite how to handle. Fear bubbled up like bile within him, bitter and caustic, and the urge to retreat back into his mind and body was almost overwhelming.

Being in Ken's head was always like this. Like being in the eye of an affectionate hurricane that could shift at any moment and result in him taking the emotional equivalent of a house to the face. It was why he so rarely possessed Ken or used him when he needed to convey messages. It was simply easier, more pleasant, for him to use Chikusa or Lancia who felt less and had better control respectively. Ken had always understood his particular limitations better than the others. He was, after all, the only one who was aware of how afraid he was that he would hurt them. Who understood that fear, because it was one he sometimes shared even if their methods and triggers were markedly different. For all that they were very, very different people they understood each other very well.

He could already feel Ken working to shove those swelling feelings down, away, rein them in before they could swallow him whole. He supposed the cartridge was good for that, at any rate, forcing Ken to learn absolute control in extreme conditions. In moments, the torrent of emotion had subsided and he could breathe again. The impulse to run was still there, but it no longer felt like an imperative.

The urge to shut down and escape was always there during possessions, always an undercurrent below every move, every thought, every misplaced desire, but the more time he spent within any one body the more prevalent it became, the more difficult to distinguish where he ended and where they began. The more their thoughts and emotions impacted and influenced him. He had a feeling that at some point he would reach some critical mass that would keep him from possessing them any longer without the risk of losing himself completely. It felt like he was getting dangerously close to that point with Lancia sometimes.

_Sorry about that. Out of practice. You okay?_

_Okay,_ he echoed, because that was a decent enough description for how he felt. Unsteady, certainly, but in reasonably decent control of his faculties.

_All right. So, you do what you've gotta do and we'll do our best with the Japanese. Lancia's going to be back with us soon, right?_

_Yes, he should be released the day after tomorrow, I believe. I'll check to be certain and let you know if that isn't the case. _

_Cool. I'll tell Chikusa what you said. Can you do me a favor before you go?_

_What is it?_

_Can you make an illusion of the mark on my cheek? The one the cartridge puts there? _

Such a simple solution to a complicated problem and he's a little annoyed he didn't think of it first. _Yes. Of course, hold on._

A few seconds of concentration and he's drawn the image from memory, traced it across Ken's cheek and made it self-sustaining so it'll be visible to anyone who views it regardless as to whether he's around to enforce it or not. _It's done. The mark will be there whether you're actively wearing the cartridge or not. Are you…?_

_Just… it's too much, sometimes. I mean, most of the time it makes me feel safe. Knowing that if something happens I have claws and teeth to defend us, but… it's tougher to control some things when I have to wear it all the time. I just… need to be able to go without it sometimes._

_Makes sense. _

_Yeah. _

The conversation lapsed into silence and Mukuro realized that for all that he had been so eager to leave moments before, now that the time had come, he was reluctant. Which was stupid, of course, it wasn't as if he were going to be gone weeks or months. There really was no reason at all to drag his feet and make mountains of molehills. _I'm going now. Take care of each other. Try not to kill anyone unless you have to._

_Yeah. Be safe. _

He left the feel of Ken's mind behind and sunk back into his own body with a relieved sigh, curling up on his bunk to the accompanying symphony of rattling chains. He needed to rest for a bit before he went to check in with Lancia.

**-ooo-  
CHIKUSA**

_You will lose everything you love._

He'd woken up that morning to find the note on his pillow. Just a long unremarkable little slip of white paper like the sort of thing they'd found in those funny cookies from the Chinese restaurant they'd usually gotten take out from while they'd been in New York. It had just been lying there when he opened his eyes and it wouldn't have even bothered him except… except it hadn't been there when he'd fallen back asleep after Ken had rolled out of bed just before the guard came around. It hadn't been there and someone would have had to come in and leave it without disturbing either himself or Ken and that... wasn't the sort of thing just anyone could do.

They'd have to be tall to avoid having to stand on Ken's bed so that took M.M. out of the running as well and while Ken had played the occasional prank on him over the years, it wasn't his sort of thing or his handwriting for that matter.

"Hey," Ken called, the top of his head popping up over the edge of the bed a bare instant after Chikusa had palmed the paper to hide it. "Mukuro wanted me to tell you that M.M. is gonna be taking over Japanese practice with us starting today since he's gonna be gone for a while."

He wrinkled his nose at that. He was fine enough with the idea in theory, but… he would really rather not have to talk to that girl more than he absolutely had to.

"Don't be like that, Kappa. She really is pretty cool if you would just give her a chance."

And that really didn't make him like the idea or her any better. He hadn't minded her during the first few months when she was just a helpful stranger, but now that Ken was always laughing with her and telling her stories, letting slip little things about them that no one else knew like she was a permanent rather than a temporary fixture in their lives. He didn't like it. Didn't like her. Didn't like how things felt like they were changing. He clutched that scrap of paper in his hand a little harder. "Fine."

"See, you say fine, but you don't mean it," Ken grouched, sighing as he dropped back down as the guard's footsteps echoed across the walk outside their cell.

No, he didn't mean it. He pushed that piece of paper into his pocket and resolved not to mention it to Ken.

If anyone had asked him, he wouldn't have been able to articulate why he did it _exactly_, just… it made him feel bad looking at it, touching it. Sent a chill down his spine and he wanted some time to think about it before he told Ken. To think about the circumstances and how it had gotten there on his pillow, how sick it had made him feel to see it lying in the dent Ken's head had left behind.

So, he resolved to keep it a secret just… just for a little while. Not forever, obviously, just until he'd had a chance to decide what it meant.

**-ooo-  
LANCIA  
**

"Forty-nine… Fifty. Very good, Mr. Rokudou," the nurse who doubled as his physical therapist said with a smile and Lancia grimaced and fell back against the cool tiles of the infirmary floor. "You're really coming along well. You'll need to keep it up when they move back to general population tomorrow though. Bet you're excited to be getting out of here, huh?"

"Oh, yes. Goody goody, regular prison, hooray," Lancia replied, rolling his eyes as he shoved himself into a sitting position. His abdominal muscles screamed bloody murder at even that small movement. It really was completely fucking pathetic how quickly he'd gotten out of shape just by lying on his ass in a hospital bed for the better part of a couple months. He was really fucking glad Mukuro wasn't around to poke fun at him as he hobbled back over to the bed.

Truth be told, he _was_ actually pretty damn eager to get the hell out of the infirmary. He was sure that gen pop at Traditore would be a steep step down from the cool, quiet infirmary, but he'd finally be able to take a piss without an escort again and, honestly, he missed Ken's constant chatter and Chikusa's steady presence a hell of a lot more than he liked the peaceful isolation of the infirmary.

"Oh, um, they asked me to mention, um, the verdict came back. They found you guilty and, um, your sentence was…"

"Death, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"It's fine, I figured that would be the case, probably. No big," Lancia yawned and clamored back up onto the bed, sticking his hand out obligingly so the nurse with the unlikely name of Larry could cuff him to the bedframe. They were apparently all operating on the honor system with this shit. They would do their part by cuffing him to the bed and pretending that might be a deterrent if he really actually felt like going somewhere and he did his part by not ripping the railing off the bed and beating anyone to death with it. Everybody won and nobody got dead. "What about my boys?"

"Oh, um, they didn't tell me, um…" Larry stuttered, looking incredibly nervous all of a sudden.

"Don't fucking wet yourself over it. I'm sure I'll find out eventually," Lancia replied, rolling his eyes again as he leaned back gingerly against the pillows with a relieved groan.

"Sorry," Larry commented and he did seem legitimately apologetic. Though that probably owed more to the fact that he always seemed five minutes away from freaking out before he ran screaming from the infirmary for no particular damn reason. Lancia couldn't decide if the little bastard was just a nervous, high-strung sort of fella or if he was just scared of Lancia in particular. Could have been either really.

"Yeah, yeah. When are they doing it? They issue a date yet?"

"I heard the twenty-seventh of June."

"Oh, they've just got all the jokes, don't they? Fine idea for a fucking anniversary present to the murderer who has everything, I guess. They can all just go suck a bag of dicks." Lancia grumbled.

There were days when he'd be perfectly content with Mukuro burning the entirety of the damn Mafia to the ground. Far more times when he wouldn't be, of course, but plenty of times when he just couldn't be bothered to give a damn. Fuckers probably thought they were being ironic or some shit, executing him on the same day he'd slaughtered his Famiglia. Like the families of his victims would appreciate that horseshit. He didn't know them, but he knew they were out there somewhere, brothers and mothers and fathers who'd lost their siblings and children to his hands, probably a fair number of kids out there too. He tried not to think about that too often. It was just too fucking depressing and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to make amends. Still, he doubted any of them much gave a shit about what day he'd be executed. He knew he wouldn't in their place.

Larry disappeared into his office looking uncomfortable and Lancia sighed turning his head against the pillow as he felt Mukuro's presence shudder up his spine, _I was wondering when you'd be showing up._

_Oh? Don't tell me you missed me._ Mukuro replied, sounding exhausted and tetchy.

_Not fucking hardly. You sound like shit, by the way. _

_You're being released tomorrow?_ Mukuro replied, pointedly ignoring his commentary.

_That's the plan. I already signed all the bullshit paperwork and everything that they shoved at me. Of course, I'm a little surprised they don't have a private wing for death row inmates._

_They do. Unfortunately there was flooding and a gas leak in that part of the prison and then the whole thing caught on fire so they've been forced to integrate those prisoners into general population or move them down to isolation for the time being. It's all very unfortunate. _

_Well, you have been fucking busy little bee, haven't you?_

Mukuro chuckled. _I appreciate that you think I spend my days sitting on my ass down here eating bonbons. This was the only way to be sure no matter how the verdict came back that you'd end up where I need you to be. I will admit, I wasn't anticipating you confessing to the murder of the Cacciatore. They probably wouldn't have sentenced you to death if you hadn't. _

The last person in the whole fucking world he wanted to discuss that decision with was Mukuro._ Yeah, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. What did they sentence you with?_

_Death, of course. They really are not terribly fond of me. June twenty-seventh is the date, I do believe. I'm not sure if that was for the sake of efficiency or because they simply have no way of nailing down the date I actually killing them._

_Oh, happy day, matching execution dates. Think I'll be your opening act or you'll be mine?"_

_I would assume they would do it simultaneously. I'm pretty sure they just shoot people to execute them here._

_Do they? Huh. Blindfolds and cigarettes and you're too young to smoke, that must be a real bummer._

_Oh, yes, because I'm certain age of consent is prohibitive when you're planning to shoot someone. Wouldn't want me to accidentally pick up a bad habit on my way to the firing squad._

Lancia snorted, earning him a funny look from Larry, who'd come back out of the little office flipping through a big manila folder. He shrugged and turned his face away, _Fair enough._

_Of course, we'll be out of here long before they get a chance. I have no intention of dying at the hands of the mafia's justice._

_I figured. You got a plan, smart guy?_

_Not yet, but if all else fails, I could always start a riot and you could just rip all the doors off their hinges and we could escape in the confusion. _

_That sounds like the worst fucking plan ever. _

_It would be. Too many variables, too much risk, I always prefer precision to luck and happenstance. _

_No fucking kidding. _

_I'm working on a plan. It'll take a few weeks to finish putting everything in place. In the meantime, you're going to need to learn Japanese._

_Seriously? Japan? What the_ fuck_ is in _Japan_?_

_That hardly concerns you at this juncture, just know that that is our next destination and I'm going to expect a greater degree of fluency than you had in English._

_Hey, my English is fucking fantastic. _

_It was passable._

_No, Ken's English was fucking passable. Mine is stellar. I, unlike you little fuckers, had to actually use it on a daily basis. _

There was a long pause, but Mukuro's presence was still there, lingering, lurking at the edge of his consciousness. Like he was waiting for something or reluctant to leave, Lancia really wasn't sure which. Finally, he sighed, _Just fucking spit it out already, kid._

_Ken's having a rough time here._

_No fucking shit. You got any other dead obvious news to report? I'd be more surprised if he wasn't. Between the cartridge and those heightened senses, prison has to be that kid's idea of hell on earth. _

He could practically feel how relieved Mukuro is by that, by the fact that he'd picked up on that. Like anyone could really fucking miss it. He doesn't have to even be with them to know being in gen pop has to be driving the poor little bastard nuts. He was probably climbing the damn walls.

_I don't know how to make it better for him._

_Get him outta here as fast as you can, kid. That's the only thing you _can_ do. Just keep working on putting your fucking ducks in a row so we can put this place in the rear view, huh? _

_Keep them safe while I'm away._

_Obviously._

And with that Mukuro was gone and he was alone with only Larry the nurse and a pressing need to see his fucking kids. He was so fucking ready to be out of here.

**-ooo-**

He wasn't sure exactly when he had fallen asleep, but he was awakened by the blare of alarms and the sound of shouting to find some fuckhead he'd never seen before holding a knife to good old nurse Larry's throat. That, in and of itself, didn't particularly bother him. He could give a shit about the skinny little nurse and it didn't even surprise him that someone had managed to get ahold of a damn scalpel. They kept the damn things in a cupboard – an unlocked cupboard, no less – so really they kind of fucking deserved what they got on that front.

What he _did_ care about was the way the asshole with the knife kept darting glances in his direction as if he were judging the distance and wondering if he could make it to him before the pissed off guard standing in the doorway shouting at him to get down on the floor could shoot him.

That wasn't a particularly great sign.

He was a death row inmate and probably a pretty fucking well known one at his point. So, while there was a possibility that this little skinhead motherfucker didn't know that, he was pretty fucking sure even this dumb bastard couldn't possibly think a laid up prisoner made a better hostage than a nurse. The man was tall and gaunt and wearing a piece of gauze wound roughly around his head. It was a little bloody and half-undone so he could only assume Larry had been in the process of patching him up when the fucker had decided to grab a knife. He had heavy, patchy scruff scattered across his cheeks and chin and his eyes were dark and sunken, though the longer he watched the more often he saw them oscillate between hollow and vacant and a sort of sly, calculating intelligence. He felt a chill run up his spine, because this felt familiar. It was like having someone walk over your grave. He couldn't have said where that odd feeling of déjà vu came from exactly or why, but… it was there, this lingering feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. Just a knee-jerk reaction that didn't do anything but make him more fucking suspicious of the motherfucker with the knife and his intentions.

Of course, that wasn't the biggest fucking issue. The biggest fucking issue was the guy was, very, very slowly, easing towards him and either the guard in the doorway hadn't noticed, didn't care or was too big a pussy to actually take a shot at the bastard. And like fuck he was just gonna just sit there and wait to find out what the crazy son of a bitch had planned.

Lancia gripped the bed's handrail in one hand and gave it a firm yank, ripping it free from the bed with a squeal of metal that caused three things to happen in quick succession.

Nurse Larry screamed and fainted at the sudden, unexpected noise, slithering out of the prisoner's grip like he was suddenly made of fucking gelatin.

The prison guard at the door jerked in surprise and fired his gun, the shot going wild as he let out a surprised little yelp like he'd never fired a damn gun before.

And with his hostage gone and the guard momentarily distracted, the prisoner made a desperate leap towards Lancia.

And that last part, at least, was kind of exactly what he had hoped would happen. Lancia greeted his charge by swinging the guard rail like a baseball bat and while he might still be a little out of shape, he was still strong enough to be able to knock that little fucker into the back wall of the Infirmary as easily as if he were batting away a kitten. The prisoner hit the wall with a sickening and rather satisfying crack, embedded just enough in the cheap-ass plaster that they'd have to peel him out of there. Lancia grinned at the image, at the blood dribbling down onto the prisoner's shoulders from what was probably a fatal head wound.

"Drop the bedrail and put your damn hands up, inmate," the guard spat, having apparently picked his jaw up off the floor and realized he still had a job to do. Lancia turned back to find the guard aiming his gun at him, his hands shaking with residual adrenaline.

Great.

The last damn thing he needed was to get fucking shot again. He'd had his fill of that shit in Mumbai.

"Relax, I was just defending myself," Lancia commented, dropping the bedrail to let it jangle uselessly from his arm as raised his hands in the air. He managed to refrain from rolling his eyes at the guard, but it was a close fucking thing.

"Don't you fucking move," the guard replied.

"Sure, sure. Whatever you say, boss."

Other guards finally came filtering into the room a couple minutes later, though whether they'd been drawn by the blaring alarms or the gunshot, Lancia wasn't certain. Either way, they scrambled in like the Keystone fucking cops, bumbling about in the too small space, getting in each other's way as they moved to secure the prisoners and check on the still unconscious nurse. Lancia kept perfectly still, allowing the guards to uncuff him from his weapon of choice and cuff his hands together behind his back. So, they were back on the honor system again apparently.

"… And I mean, obviously, that big guy was probably calling the shots."

Lancia whirled around to glare at the guard, he of the happy trigger finger, who was in the process of explaining emphatically the many trials and tribulations he had faced and apparently merrily fucking embellishing the shit out of what had happened while he was at it.

"Are you fucking kidding me, you little shit?" Lancia snarled, causing the guard to jump and fluster. "I was fucking taking a nap and I wake up to find that fucker over there taking that guy hostage and you pointing a gun at him. How the fuck am _I_ meant to be calling the shots on that clusterfuck?"

"You… well, you were… you're Mukuro Rokudo."

"I don't give a shit if I'm the goddamn Queen of fucking Sheba. What the hell would I have to gain from any of that bullshit?"

"Well, I mean, they just, uh, they just sentenced you so, um, maybe you were, um, planning to escape and, um…"

"Look, if you're gonna try and fucking blame me for something, at least make it something I'd actually fucking do, huh? Because I have literally fucking _nothing _to gain from having some incompetent fucker I've never even seen before trot his punk ass in here while I was sleeping, take a hostage, draw your attention and then try to fucking stab me for kicks."

"We should really get the Warden down here," one of the other guards suggested as a few more began the process of trying to pry the dead guy out of the damn wall.

There seemed to be a general consensus that that was a pretty good idea and Lancia finally did roll his eyes as he leaned back awkwardly against his bound hands and waited for these dumb fucks to get a clue.

**-ooo-  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 163  
**January 15

CHIKUSA

"What the _fuck_?"

Chikusa startled awake at the quiet, groggy exclamation and he was rolling out of his bed, to fall into a crouch on the floor beside Ken's before he'd even fully awakened.

For a moment, he couldn't quite process what he was seeing and when he did, he felt his stomach clench with anxiety. Ken was scrubbing his hand through his even blond hair. His sheets and blanket and pillow were littered with little tufts and strands of golden hair. He looked vaguely panicked, "I couldn't have done this, right? I mean, I… my nails don't without the cartridge and…"

"No," Chikusa murmured, crawling up onto the bed beside him and running his own hands through Ken's fluffy uneven hair, catching Ken's hands and drawing them down and away. "Prank."

Though he wasn't sure he really believed that. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that yesterday there was a weird note and today there was… this.

Ken frowned, his eyes still wide with panic and his fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against Chikusa's hands, "And I didn't wake up? Seems like I should have woken up, right? I mean, I can barely fucking sleep as it is so why…?"

The question hung between them and Chikusa wished he had a good answer… or even a bad answer, just… any answer at all.

They both should have and he didn't like that they hadn't. Didn't like that someone could get that close to them in their locked cell and they hadn't woken up, but the only other option was that Ken had done this to himself and he didn't believe that.

"M? Did you cut my fucking hair?"

"Why the _hell_ would I cut your hair?" M.M. replied, yawning and rolling over to look at them, her eyes widening once she caught a good look at Ken and his lopsided hair. "Oh my god, what the hell happened to your _head_?"

"That's what I wanna fucking know!" Ken grouched, sweeping irritably at his lap, knocking the bigger chunks of hair off onto the floor. Chikusa watched them fall, his fingers still caught in Ken's uneven locks and the sickness in his stomach solidified into something like dread.

But then the guard was arriving to take them to the showers and there wasn't time for much else. None of them missed the guard's smirk though and Ken hunched his shoulders, shoving the cartridge in before they left the cell. Chikusa gave him his hat to wear and Ken pulled it low and tight across his forehead, walking approximately six inches closer than he usually did all morning.

After breakfast, they went back to their cell and set about the task of awkwardly cutting Ken's hair with a pair of safety scissors that the girl had managed to scourge up for them from somewhere. She stood guard outside until they were finished. If he'd had any lingering doubts about whether Ken had miraculously started growing claws without the aid of the cartridge and accidentally sliced off those chucks of hair in his sleep, using Ken's claws to trim up the remaining hair once the little scissors had stopped working would have done away with them. He took off his glasses and wielded Ken's clawed fingers as knifes and it had still taken nearly an hour before he was finally done.

In order to even it out, he'd had to cut it close and it was far, far shorter than he'd ever seen it. He stood in front of him after he was done and it was so strange. It was almost like he was looking at a stranger with a familiar face, someone who looked a lot like Ken, but wasn't him at all. He ran his fingers across the scruff of it, pushing the soft bristles up and back, scratching his short fingernails over Ken's scalp.

Ken made a soft, injured sound and dropped his head forward to rest against Chikusa's stomach.

"That feels so fucking weird," he muttered, wrapping his arms around Chikusa's waist and holding him fast when he was about to step away. "Do I look weird?" He asked, his voice muffled against his shirt.

"No," he lied.

**-ooo-  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 162  
**January 16

A lock of Ken's hair, braided and tied off with black string was on his pillow when he woke up that morning.

The golden strands were smeared with blood.

And another note: _Is a lion without a mane still a lion?_

The sound of Ken's snoring echoed through their room and it was comforting… but also terrible. Before even just a hint of unfamiliar blood in the air was enough to wake him from a dead sleep, but… things were different in here. He'd barely slept all those first few weeks unable to relax or ignore all the random and unfamiliar smells that made up the recirculating prison air. He'd adjusted eventually to a point but, even now, Ken still slept lightly or not at all and it scared him a little that Ken was sleeping through this just as he'd slept through yesterday's haircut. Nothing he could say to Ken would make any difference except to make him more anxious, make it more difficult for him to rest, but… he didn't like keeping secrets. Especially not this, these notes that made him feel sick and ashamed like whoever was writing those words was getting away with something and he was _letting_ them.

He wished for the cool, shivering rush of Mukuro's presence. Mukuro would know what the right thing to do was. Whether he should tell Ken or keep it a secret so as not to panic him. Ken was already freaking out about the mysterious haircut and he could see the way the strain was affecting him. How much harder he had to work to manage his emotions while he had the cartridge in. He wore it as little as possible, but even without it he was on edge, paranoid and self-conscious. They'd been lucky that Mukuro had made that illusion, that had been a good idea, but Ken still couldn't bring himself to go out of the cell into the public areas without the cartridge in now. Maybe he'd have been all right before the haircut, but now he was jumping at shadows. Plus there was the additional problem of the hair growth the cartridge caused. If he kept wearing it every day, taking it in and out like that, they'd have to keep trimming it. The length had never been a particular problem when it was long and shaggy, no one had noticed if it was a little longer than usual and so maintenance hadn't really been necessary all that often. Now though their situation was delicate enough as it was with the council knowing they were from Esterneo, if they also realized that they were _different _as well… he wasn't sure if they would care, really, but he worried about it nonetheless. Worried about little rooms and being studied and pulled apart piece by piece while mafia men with their filthy, blood-soaked hands tried to figure out how they worked.

He squeezed his eyes shut and clutched that lock of hair in his hand and called Mukuro's name silently again and again even though he knew it didn't work like that. Even though he knew Mukuro couldn't hear him.

Mukuro wasn't there.

For the first time, Mukuro wasn't there when he needed him.

Not even Lancia was there.

He was supposed to be released from the infirmary the day before, but there'd been no sign of him. No sign of Mukuro, no sign of Lancia.

He was alone.

So, he tucked the lock of hair in his pocket along with the note so he could toss it once he got to the bathroom, slid off his bunk and dropped to the floor.

**-ooo-  
****NOW  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 161  
**UNAFFILIATED  
TRADITORE  
January 17

**WARDEN PELLEGRINO**

There were plenty of days when he hated his job. It was typically a stressful and thankless task being the man in charge of an exclusive mafia-only prison facility. They were privately funded and overseen by the Council and so it wasn't even as if he truly held much power over anyone or anything within these walls besides guard rotations and prisoner work details. The pay was poor, bonuses and vacation time virtually nonexistent, he was blamed and held accountable for every little thing that went wrong and lately he'd been having the worst run of luck.

It wasn't that he wasn't glad to have them back. Those little bastards who had been the first prisoners to ever escape these walls. That part made him very happy indeed. He'd been thrilled when the Vindice had delivered them to his door. Perhaps slightly less thrilled about the condition of the ringleader since he then had to spend precious resources getting him patched up and on the mend, but overall quite glad. He'd been planning for this day for almost two years. He'd hired all new guards. He'd installed new security measures in both the General Population block as well as Solitary. He had even fast-tracked their processing to get them through and into general population more quickly. This time, this time, they would not escape. This time he was ready for Mukuro Rokudou and whatever his little band of miscreants could dish out. He would prove to the Council that he was more than capable of keeping a bunch of children incarcerated and they would have to stop calling him 'Catch and Release Pellegrino' behind his back.

Then, of course, the trouble had started almost before they were even in the doors. He'd had one guard dead and one completely unrepentant child killer who'd moved so fast that even looking back at the security footage and slowing it down, he was only able to see a blur of motion and then a guard bleeding out while that boy put his hands behind his head cool as you please. That had been bad enough. But then several of the younger guards had decided to take out their frustrations on that child after they'd taken him down to Solitary. He knew, better than anyone since he was one of the last remaining employees who'd been present for Mukuro Rokudou's last stay in Traditore that Mario Rossi probably wasn't a normal kid. He hadn't needed a letter to inform him of that fact, though he'd been grateful for the confirmation nonetheless.

Still, abnormal or not, Mario Rossi was still a child. The last damn thing he needed was for the Council to find out that his guards had almost killed a child in his custody. They'd replace him in a hot minute and while he often hated his job, he wasn't quite ready to leave it behind. So he'd covered it up as best he could, erasing the security footage, leaving Mario Rossi to heal alone in his cell with only occasional checks from the nurse in the infirmary just to be sure the injuries were healing well enough. He'd also slowly replaced the guards who'd done the deed, firing them for minor infractions and hiring replacements that were a little older and wiser than the boys they were replacing. Life moved on. Then, of course, just when things had seemed to have finally settled down, the Council representatives had shown up to interview Mario Rossi. And, _of course_, the little bastard had attacked them. That was just how his luck ran. He'd managed to bypass most of his security measures like they were nothing and had put his _hand_ through the shoulder of Simone Pasquale, had slammed the Boss of Vongola against a damn wall. It was just... so _embarrassing_. And, _of course_, he'd been blamed for it.

Never mind that Boss Pasquale had been the one to order the cell door opened in the first place.

Fortunately, not everything that had come out of that day had been a total loss. He was fairly certain that it was because the boy had managed all that that he'd gotten the initial offer after all.

It was a common practice that people within the mafia could negotiate and pay for the release of prisoners held within Traditore and Vendicare. It didn't happen terribly frequently as lawbreakers weren't exactly a priced commodity within the mafia as they often attracted far more trouble than they were worth. But, it was known to happen on occasion particularly for inmates who had one-of-a-kind skill sets. It was frowned upon, but the prison system of the mafia was as much a business as anything else and as long as the prisoner wasn't one that had enemies in the highest levels of the mafia establishment, the Council generally turned a blind eye to the practice.

Of course, since Vendicare usually housed the more dangerous and thus more high-value prisoners, the warden was quite certain that the Vindice had far more interest and received far better offers than he did for his considerably less glamorous minors and standard grade inmates.

Mario Rossi, however, was different. His attack on the Council and his sudden association with the infamous Esterneo Famiglia had made him a very special case indeed. He was certain the Vindice would have loved to get their greedy hands on him, but there was no chance of that happening now. After all, Traditore was the prison used to house death row inmates except in very particular instances where the inmate required far greater security than Traditore was capable of provided. And while his speed and strength were impressive, they were hardly singular or spectacular enough in the grand scheme of things and to warrant transfer him to the more secure walls of Vendicare. Still, while it might not make him dangerous enough to require a transfer, that speed and strength had still apparently been interesting enough that word had gotten around about him.

The warden had been delighted to receive his first offer for the boy's release in November. It had been, as all initial offers are, far too low for him to even consider it, particularly with Rossi being such a high profile prisoner, but the fact that he'd gotten an offer so early did bode well for the future.

He'd received another offer in early December that had been almost three times what that initial offer had been and when he'd refused he'd almost immediately received a third offer for an even larger sum with a request for a counter offer as well as a small list of good faith requests that he hadn't seen any reason not to grant. They were small things for the most part, easily done and even more easily concealed and he was quite eager for the negotiations to go well. If he were able to procure the sum he had in mind he would be able to retire to a beach on some uncharted island and never worry a day in his life about repercussions from the mafia.

He was in the process of writing a response to the latest offer when a frantic knock at his office door summoned him from his thoughts. "Enter," he called, turning the paper over and placing his folded hands over it as the door opened and a guard ducked his head in.

He recognized the guard as one of those he had working down in Solitary, but damned if he could remember his name off the top of his head. "Yes?"

"Uh, sorry to disturb you, sir, but, um, there's a problem down in Solitary," the man said, fidgeting nervously in the doorway.

Agosto. This guard's name was Davide Agosto. He'd been one of his first hires when he'd been forced to purge the guard after Mukuro Rokudou's little band of miscreants had escaped. He'd been working down in Solitary for about three months. "What kind of problem, Agosto?"

"Uh, it's Mario Rossi, sir."

"What's he done now?" He asked, rubbing his forehead irritably. If that boy wasn't worth so damn much money….

"Well, that's just it, sir. Nothing. He's still sleeping."

"How is that a problem exactly?"

"He's been sleeping for almost three days, sir. He hasn't eaten and we don't think he's woken up at all. I mean, I know you said…"

"Three days? And you're only now letting me know?"

Agosto looked positively flummoxed, "Um, we told you yesterday, sir."

"I think I'd remember you telling me one of the prisoners down in Solitary was basically comatose, Agosto," he snapped, his mind whirling as he went over his day. No, he definitely didn't remember getting even a passing comment about anyone in Solitary much less Mario Rossi.

"Well, I mean, we sent Mario up and tell you about it, sir. He said to just have Larry check him out and leave him be, sir."

"Mario? Do we have a Mario working down in Solitary?" He furrowed his brow, shuffling papers aside to find the duty roster. Where the hell was the damn thing? Why couldn't he ever find anything in this mess?

"Um, yes, sir? The new hire? He's been down there for a few days now. I thought it was kind of weird because you don't usually put the new guys down there, but…"

He didn't remember approving a new hire. Not since last November and that had been that short, stocky Paolo. And even if he had, he wouldn't have assigned them to Solitary. He didn't assign anyone but the most seasoned guards down there these days. Not since the first Rossi incident.

He finally found the duty roster folder buried under a stack of Lancia Salvatore's medical files and flipped it open to the appropriate week, frowning. Just as he thought, there was no Mario listed at all. Anywhere. He had absolutely no one working as a guard or anywhere else in the prison named Mario. "Is this Mario here today?"

"Yes, sir. I think he's on his lunch break, but I definitely saw him this morning. He's usually in surveillance room rather than on the block though, so I wouldn't…."

"It's fine. I want you to find him and bring him to me down in the surveillance room, I don't want to sound the alarm, but this little bastard isn't one of ours. I want you to be prepared to shoot him if he tries anything, got it? Make sure all the other guards you run into along the way are aware of the situation."

"Y-yes, sir," Agosto replied, trailing behind him as he stomped down the hallway. Like hell some little prick was going to come in here and steal his meal ticket and that was almost certainly what was going on.

Unbelievable. Just completely unbelievable. He was having absolutely the worst run of luck. Like he didn't have enough to worry about without having to worry about whether his meal ticket was going to die on him or be stolen away by some infiltrating son of a bitch. Negotiations were progressing so _well_ too. Certainly he'd had to make a few unusual concessions, like that idiotic thing about putting Salvatore in the Box for a week, but nothing that would compromise him if there were a council inquiry and now… this. No one would pay for a comatose murderer. That was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.

When he reached the surveillance room he found a thin cigar burning against an ashtray on the desk and the chair still warm, but no sign of the mysterious Mario. Grumbling to himself, he sat down at the desk and ran the exterior hall tape back until he caught sight of a man walking away from the surveillance room. He played the tape, narrowing his eyes as the dark-haired man in the uniform waved over his shoulder.

He snagged the radio from the desk, "I want that man stopped immediately. He has dark hair and he's wearing a guard uniform, he goes by the name Mario and you might have seen him working down in Solitary this week. He's heading for the exit. If he refuses to stop, shoot him in the damn leg. That should slow him down a fair bit."

Static and silence were his only answer.

Cursing, he clipped the radio to his belt and went to check on the boy. He could see him on the monitor, lying back on his bed. He wondered if they'd adjusted him, he'd seen enough surveillance of Rossi over the last six months to know that he rarely laid flat on his back like that, preferring it seemed to sleep sitting up against the wall. Still, the footage could be faked or looped. He wouldn't feel at ease until he'd seen the boy with his own two eyes.

He was halfway there when the radio at his waist burst with fresh static and a voice he didn't recognize. "I would suggest calling off your guards if you don't want to explain why you lost five of them today."

"You've got a fucking nerve, don't you? I have a good mind to just have them shoot you."

"Now, now, that's hardly polite. I don't think I like your attitude. You'd never even have known that I'd been here if that guard hadn't been so overly concerned about the boy. Honestly, it isn't as if he were going to sleep himself to death," the man commented, sounding as casual as if he were chatting about the weather. "As to who I am, just think of me as a concerned party who wanted to have a look at merchandise before purchase. Nothing you need to worry about, of course, I hardly intended to steal him away without paying you what you're owed. I was merely curious as to how he was reacting to all I've done for him lately. Imagine my disappointment to find him sleeping through it all like a damn princess in a tower. I'm truly devastated. I went through all that effort, came all the way here and he's spoiled the fun." The man didn't sound devastated, if anything he sounded cheerful. It made the warden's skin crawl.

Dammit.

He had reached Mario Rossi's cell and found the little door window slot standing open. The boy was inside, lying on his back, chains limp around his wrists and quite dead to the world, just as he had appeared on the security feed. His long hair was loose around his face making him look younger and softer than he ever did when he was awake.

Dammit.

"So? What's it going to be? Are you going to call your men off or do I have to kill the lot? I really don't have all day."

_Dammit._

This was almost certainly the unseen man he had been negotiating with. This man could have funded his retirement if only he'd never shown his face here, if only they'd never actually spoken. It would have been so simple sell that child to some unknown, unseen entity. He'd have done it and been thrilled with the deal he'd made. He didn't have much in the way of sympathy for murderers of any stripe even if they were children. Even now if he were just a smidgeon more of a bastard than he was he'd still be fine with it But… he'd never thought of himself as a cruel man, a greedy man, certainly, but not cruel. And the idea of turning over this boy to this laughing man… there was simply no way he'd be able to live with himself, not for all the money in the world.

Son of a _bitch_.

He'd really been looking forward to that retirement too.

He pressed the talk button on the radio and breathed a long sigh, "Kill the bastard."

A hail of gunfire rang out over the radio and he had only the barest moment to wonder who was pressing down the button so he could hear it before the man's voice spoke again still as cheerful as ever. "See what you made me do? You've got quite a mess to clear up down here now, I'm afraid. It's going to quite a chore explaining to the Council why five of your guards just decided to spontaneously shoot each other." A soft clicking sound followed and then the press and release of a door being opened and then slamming shut again. "It truly is quite unfortunate that we couldn't be friends, Warden Pellegrino. Do be sure to take good care of my property while it remains in your care, won't you?"

**-ooo-**

**KEN**

"Seriously, dammit, what the _fuck_ is that fucking noise?" Ken howled, slapping his hands over his ears as the piercing sound rang out again, sharp and loud and echoing through the entire fucking prison it seemed like.

"Seriously, I have no_ idea_ what you're talking about," M.M. replied, sighing into her magazine. "And why are you _shouting_? I can hear you just fine."

"How can you not fucking _hear it_? It's loud as shit. It's like, I don't fucking know, a steam whistle or something!" He knew he was shouting, but he couldn't seem to stop himself, not with that sound still ringing in his head.

"Maybe it's a dog whistle."

"Oh, fuck _you_, very fucking funny!"

"I meant that seriously, _dick_. It's a loud, piercing whistle that only you can hear. A dog whistle is a perfectly legit possibility," M.M. replied crossly, dropping her magazine in favor of glaring at him.

The sound cut off abruptly and Ken breathed a sigh of relief, yanking the cartridge out of his mouth just in case it went off again. His head ached, but that wasn't anything new. He'd had a headache all damn day. He seemed like he'd had a headache for fucking _months_. "Why the fuck would someone in here have a fucking dog whistle?"

"I don't know. Why would someone bother to cut your stupid hair? Obviously someone is fucking with you."

"Yeah, I guess so. Fuck," Ken scrubbed a hand through his hair and hated it all over again. He looked fucking ridiculous. He had half a mind to just keep putting the cartridge in and taking it back out over and over until it grew back, but… but that seemed like a really stupid idea. Mukuro had been really fucking specific and bitchy about the idea of him using it more than he needed to in the first place. He'd probably be super pissed if he found out he used it because he didn't like his fucking _haircut_. "Just… don't mention it to Chikusa, alright? He's been really fucking weird since the haircut thing and I don't want him to flip his shit."

"Is Chikusa even capable of flipping his shit? Wouldn't that require him to have more than one emotion to speak of?"

"Shut up," Ken snapped automatically. "You don't know anything about it."

M raised her hands in mock surrender, "Easy, Tiger. Fair point. He's your friend, I shouldn't have said that."

"You're my friend too," Ken grumbled, glaring at her because that had seemed like the world's most insincere fucking apology. "I wouldn't let him say shit like that about you either."

"I told you, we're not friends. I don't do the friends thing, Ken," M replied, looking a little put out herself now.

"Whatever. Just don't fucking tell him, all right?"

"Like I'm really going to go out of my way to talk to someone who hates me."

"He doesn't fucking hate you."

"He really, really does. Ask him."

And because that's just how the universe worked, Chikusa chose just that moment to come back from the bathroom. "Chikusa, do you hate M?"

Chikusa blinked and then shifted his gaze over to M for a long moment before shifting it back to Ken. He shrugged and adjusted his glasses before continuing on across the room to his bunk.

"See, I told you so," M laughed, sounding more amused than insulted by Chikusa's dislike.

**-ooo-  
****NOW  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 160  
**(FORMER) ESTERNEO  
VENDICARE  
January 18

**LUCIA**

She sat across from him, a cigarette dangling from her yellowed knuckles and a thin smile on her face. There was nothing quite like old enemies when they needed something and she did not believe Timoteo of Vongola would have come to see her on a whim. No, most definitely not. She had been in Vendicare for ten years and no one visited this place on a whim, no one came here simply to chat about the old days, and no one had come for her at all in all those long years save one. Not that that had been unexpected. When you break Omerta, you are a fool if you expect others will thank you for it even it was a necessity. The mafia loved to believe themselves righteous, just. That was the principle upon which it was founded though few enough seem to remember that now in their struggles for power and honor and wealth. No, the mafia's justice was anything but just. The mafia of today was ruled by thickheaded little pricks who loved their little secrets and their pointless traditions. They spoke of honor, but their honor had never been the same as hers and she was content enough knowing she had done what was needed. She cared nothing for what those worthless bastards thought of her. She had not broken one of the mafia's most sacred laws on a whim or for a pat on the back from those. She had done it for one reason only and she had weighed the cost all those years ago and resolved herself to paying it and she still did not regret doing so. Would never regret it even after she was a corpse turned to dust.

Still, she could admit that it was nice to have company besides the cunts on her block, nice to be out of her cell and nicer still to be smoking a cigarette with a filter. Such silly fucking things, but those were the things that you never appreciated until they were nothing but a fond memory. She tapped the cigarette gently against the edge of the cheap plastic ashtray before taking another long drag and slumping deeper into her chair as she blew the heavy, rich, stinking smoke in the Vongola's face. "You are a delightful man after all, Timoteo. The cigarettes they allow you in here are garbage. You bring me these good cigarettes, you feel free to come visit any time."

"It's good to see you, Lucia. You're looking well."

She scoffed, she'd never been one for pleasantries and the years between them hadn't changed that fact, if anything they had made her less patient with such social niceties. That was one thing she enjoyed about Vendicare, no one here bothered to shy away from calling a spade a spade. "I am old and I grow fat from years spent in tiny cell. There is no room to run in a prison yard even if we got more than a few hours a week to do so. You've grown old and ugly. I suppose we are both losers to time. We have both of us lived good long lives and soon we shall die and leave behind old, ugly corpses. Your corpse would have been much more handsome if you'd simply allowed me to rip out your throat fifteen years ago, yeah?"

"I suppose it would," Timoteo conceded, ever the good sport. "Aria asked me to send her regards."

"Aria…. That is Luce's girl, yes? She was pretty girl, nice face, tragic life to look forward to. You don't have to tell me that Luce is dead. She told me she was dying the last I saw her. I know this to be true because I do not see her again. She always said she would die young. Fate is cruel, but she always believed it would work out for the best. I hope she is right for her own sake. The world is already too full of such sad things. How is Luce's girl?"

"She has a daughter of her own now, she turns eight next week."

"And the years roll on. Soon she shall be dead and her daughter shall take her place. Maybe this year, maybe the next, it matters not as it will always be too soon. But you did not come to speak of such things and, even if you did, I have no desire to speak to you, you of all people, about the few things I hold dear."

"You're right, I didn't come to talk about Luce or Aria. I came to show you something." He took out a photo from his briefcase and placed it face-up on the table before sliding it across to her. She glanced down at the photo casually; amused to find it was a booking photo of a trio of children. She was about to ask why he was bothering to show her such a thing when her gaze touched on the small boy on the right side of the photo, all devil-may-care attitude and punkish blond hair. She leaned forward, the cigarette dangling forgotten from her lip as she studied that image.

The smoke got in her eyes, stinging as she examined every detail with a hungry gaze. She knew those eyes, that disorderly hair. She did not know those scars, but that attitude that seemed to leap from the page… she had been like that in her younger, wilder days. Long before she'd have ever thought of having children or that she would consign herself to prison for the sake of her only child's future.

_This_ child's future.

"My son," she whispered softly, ash spilling from her cigarette. She brushed it away absentminded, as she traced a shaking finger over his face. So small. He was still so small even after all this time. There was no point in being coy about what this boy was to her. Timoteo would not have bothered coming here if he did not already know. "You have come here to speak of my son."

"I thought that he might be yours, he looks quite a bit like you. If you want there are tests…"

"Bah, tests. Nonsense. Five minutes, twelve years, it matters not. A mother knows her child. A mother always knows, whether it be a child born of blood or love, it matters not, a mother always knows. This is my boy and he as beautiful and strong now as he was then. What is his name? What do they call him?"

"Ken. Ken Joshima."

"Ken. Bah. Like doll. A weak name for such a strong boy. And he is strong. A mother can tell that too. He was so small when he was born, when they cut him from my belly. So early that they worried he would not live, but when he screams it echoes through the room like thunder. He has heart of a lion, my son. It does not matter his size. Who are these boys with him?'

"Chikusa Kakimoto and Lancia Salvatore. Chikusa is another survivor of Esterneo and Lancia was a member of Cacciatore."

"Kakimoto? This is Nadia's boy then, hm? They are friends?" The boy looked like Nadia. The same delicate bone structure, the same pretty face and straight, dark hair. Though that last was difficult to see with that hat in the way. Still there was so little of that woman's husband there, as if even Nadia's genetics had been stiff and frigid and absolute in their refusal to compromise. Strange to think of her son and Nadia's being anything so simple as friends. The world was wide and filled with such odd wonders.

"It would seem so. They're all very loyal to each other at any rate. There was another boy with them as well. I'm assuming you heard about Esterneo? What happened at their headquarters?"

Lucia snorted, it such a ridiculous question that was, "Only thing that travels faster than bad news in prison is glad tidings. I have heard what they say. I do not believe they are all dead. Some rats might get caught in the ship or the suction, but few enough are actually dragged down and drowned when it sinks."

"I imagine you're probably correct in that. That's one of the reasons I came to speak with you. You broke Omerta once, you can't break it or be punished for it again."

Lucia chose to ignore that last, more interested in what information she could weasel out of him than what information he might want from her. "My boy. Why is he in prison? What has he done?"

"He was a survivor of the massacre."

Of course he was. Damn that woman. She should have killed her when she killed her worthless, no account son, but she had not wanted her boy to be adopted into the Famiglia proper or, worse, by Nicolo or, god forbid, _Alonzo_. That loathsome man who had led Esterneo down the path of ruin and dishonor, who cared for little enough besides power and being the one to wield it. It would have been just like him to adopt her boy to spite her. Of course, it would seem all she had done was postpone the inevitable if her boy had still somehow found his way to Esterneo even after all she had done to keep him from it.

She tapped a sharp nail against the photo, glancing up at Timoteo briefly with narrowed eyes, before turning her gaze back to her son. "I do not believe even mafia justice believes in imprisoning victims. Though perhaps this policy has changed since I have been in here?"

"The third boy, who has been going by the name Mario Rossi, has confessed to being the one behind the massacre. He attacked the council when we arrived to question him; he's been sentenced to death for his crimes. Lancia is implicated in the murder of his own Famiglia so he faces the same fate. Ken and Chikusa are being held as accomplices only. They will probably be released in a few years."

Good boy then, that one, that Mario Rossi, a smart boy. She wondered whose son he was, this boy who was not pictured, who had protected hers. For she knew a lie when she heard one. No child of hers would have been content to cower while others bled for him and Nadia's boy didn't have the look of a victim either. No, if three boys had walked out of Esterneo alive then it was three boys who participated in the slaughter. Of that she was quite certain. And it was a smart boy who kept them together, kept himself from the walls of Vendicare. She was certain the Vindice would have been quite happy to have him, a strong boy like that.

Still, there was a hole in this story the same as there had been a hole in the story that circulated Vendicare, shouted down the line and whispered in the yard. No one talked about why and massacres rarely happened without a cause, without a reason, especially not massacres orchestrated and executed by children.

She turned her gaze away from the photo to the Vongola with great effort, "You are not telling me something important."

Timoteo nodded, his expression solemn, "Esterneo… was experimenting on those children. I'm not sure what they did to them, as none of them were willing to talk, but I have received some reports from my associates in that regard and have observed a few things myself. If you're interested in a trade, I would be willing to share this information with you."

_Ah_, there was the snake she knew of old.

She leaned back in her chair, taking a long drag off her cigarette before taking it from her mouth and flicking ash on the floor. "What is it you wish to know?"

**-ooo-  
****NOW  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 160  
**THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 18

**LANCIA**

Special Solitary or, as it was more commonly known in Traditore, The Punishment Box or sometimes just The Box, was not, in fact, actually a box at all. No, The Box was instead just a tall, narrow room, the size of a utility closet, with no windows and a solid metal door with a slot at the bottom just large enough for a meal tray to be slipped through. There was an old, rust-stained toilet, a tiny sink that spat and sputtered ice cold brownish water and just enough floor space to sit down, or maybe to lie down if you curled up in a ball and happened to be pretty fucking small to begin with. It was freezing cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer and the air always felt stale and smelled vaguely of mildew because the air circulation in that part of the prison was exceptionally poor. It was located within the oldest part of the prison that had never been fully converted for use as part of the modern prison and thus had fallen into terrible disrepair for lack of funds to renovate it. At some point, they would inevitably need to convert some other area of the prison into a Special Solitary cell, but for now they kept on using this place as it was convenient and still functional enough to serve.

It reminded Lancia, vaguely, of some places he'd stayed in when he was a kid living in the back rooms of condemned buildings, squeezing through broken windows or doors to carve out a bit of space for himself amidst food wrappers and broken bottles, the rubbish and debris of strangers that always seemed to accumulate in such forgotten places. It reminded him of piss-soaked mattresses and crumbling ceilings and the pervasive damp that seemed to linger everywhere in those rooms during the warm seasons. Not the sort of place he'd have wanted to linger even when he was small and desperate and much less the sort of place he wanted to be now that he was older and far too large to fit comfortably in such a tiny space. He had enough room to sit uncomfortably, pressing his bent legs against the far wall.

He'd been here for three days and the simmering rage hadn't dissipated at all. He still wanted to fucking murder someone, because he fucking knew, absolutely fucking knew, that this was being done to keep him out of general population. Like hell they actually gave a shit about whether he'd killed another inmate or not, especially not one who they'd agreed he'd killed in fucking self-defense.

No, that was fucking _bullshit_.

Total fucking bullshit.

He didn't give a shit what that fucking weasel of a warden said or how nicely he said it. He knew a set up when he fucking stepped into one and he'd have kicked the door down days ago if he thought he could get to them and prevent whatever the fuck was about to happen. Because this had to be about them, had to be about Chikusa and Ken and he knew, he fucking knew they could take care of themselves. They'd always been tough little bastards and he'd worked with them enough that he knew damn well they could take anyone that came at them directly. The problem was these fuckers weren't coming for them directly. No, they were sidling up to them in the dark and biding their fucking time. They'd managed to out plan Mukuro and he didn't want to fucking know how they'd figured on him being out of the picture for the time being. Or maybe… maybe they hadn't. Maybe whatever the fuck it was that was happening wasn't something Mukuro would have been able to stop even if he'd been present and accounted for. Maybe this was all some fucking morality play being staged for Mukuro's benefit and the intended audience hadn't bothered to show up for the performance. That'd be a fucking laugh. Of course, that didn't mean the show wouldn't go on. They'd gone to an awful lot of fucking trouble to set him up, he could only assume they hadn't put forth any less effort in whatever they were doing to Chikusa and Ken.

He'd raged the first day, kicking dents in the walls and the door, cursing a blue fucking streak at them for putting him here, at himself for falling right into this stupid fucking trap, at Mukuro for not being around the one fucking time, the _one fucking time_, he wanted him to be. Now he just sat. Sat and ate his food when they brought it and waited. His anger was a simmering fire in his chest and all he could think of besides hundreds of awful fucking things that could be happening to the boys was how he was going to fucking gut that sniveling rodent of a warden before they left this prison. That was going to be his reward to himself for not busting down the damn door of this cell and giving them an excuse to chuck him down in the solitary confinement wing with Mukuro.

Four more days.

He gave the wall opposite him another swift kick adding another dent to the collection already there. It didn't really make him feel any better, but he was satisfied that he was at least leaving his mark on this place.

Just four more days.

It seemed like a fucking eternity.

**-ooo-**

**CHIKUSA**

"Who is that?" Chikusa murmured and M.M. looked a little startled as if she can't quite believe he was talking to her. He supposed that that was probably fair as he doesn't really like talking to her, doesn't really like her. He makes a point of only speaking to her when he has to which means he hasn't spoken to her directly in weeks. He doesn't like how she laughs with Ken sometimes as if they share private jokes he knows nothing about. As if there are suddenly little slivers of Ken's life that belong to her instead of him and it's never really been like that before and it makes him restless, unsettled. Even with Mukuro and Lancia it never felt like he was being left out because Ken would always notice and would haul him along or pull him into the conversations or tell him about them later. But now there were conversations that happened when he wasn't there that Ken didn't tell him about. It was like they were slowly growing away and apart and he wasn't sure how to stop it or even if he should and it hurt.

This girl was a stranger or as near as made no difference. Certainly she'd helped them out a few times and Mukuro had hired her to help them with the escape and with their Japanese, but that didn't make her one of them. She wasn't one of them. She was just a stranger and even if she hadn't meant to do so, she had stolen just a little of Ken's focus for herself, a little of his laughter and good humor and affection.

He hates her a little for that.

He hates himself for hating her.

The circle goes round and round.

He knows that he has no one to blame but himself as he's been finding it… challenging to be close to Ken and not tell him about the notes. The notes that keep finding their way to his pillow every morning bringing new messages and he's stopped throwing them away. Instead he saves them, folds them up small and keeps them hidden in his pockets. He's not sure why. At first he thought he was keeping them so he could show Ken, but he knows he isn't going to do that. He doesn't want Ken to see those words. Those awful words that make him feel sick and helpless in a way nothing else ever has. When they lay together at night, Ken keeps looking at him like he can see that something is wrong, but every time he opens his mouth to tell him he finds himself saying that it's nothing. That he's tired. That he's worried about Mukuro or Lancia. And none of those things are lies, but none are the truth either.

"Who is what?" M.M. answers finally, her gaze darting off in the direction he's looking. Somehow she manages to figure out exactly to whom he's referring just from that. He wonders if she'd noticed the way he'd been watching them as well. "Ah. Him. Yeah, that's Birds."

"Birds?"

"Yeah, you're talking about the creep with the hat, right?"

"Yes. Been watching us."

She snorted, "Well, he would be, wouldn't he? Total creep. He used to eyeball me the same way when I first got here. I've heard he's got a thing for kids. Other than that, I don't know much about him except that he runs some kind of mail order assassination thing and they let him keep those stupid little birds which always just seems unhygienic, but whatever."

Chikusa nodded, frowning slightly as his mind raced over the options. He didn't understand everything she was saying. He'd rather ask Ken about it than admit his ignorance, but… he didn't want to worry Ken if he didn't have to which was the only reason he was even talking to her in the first place. Besides, Ken was having a difficult time with the cartridge as it was and stress would make it worse. "Thing for kids?"

"Yeah, you know, he…" M.M. frowned and turned to stare at him for a long moment. "You seriously have no idea what I mean do you? Damn, you guys must have had a weird childhood. Didn't your parents talk to you about strangers?"

Chikusa felt his frown deepen. He didn't want to talk about his parents, didn't want to think about them either. He'd made a point of not thinking about them in the years between Esterneo and now. Esterneo had stolen most of those memories from him like water being squeezed from a sponge. He just hadn't been able to hold them, hadn't wanted to because it hurt to think of those things when he'd been sleeping on a concrete floor and the only thing that had existed for him outside that room had been pain. If there had been caring, concerned parental conversations about strangers and the dangers they posed, he didn't remember them. Didn't want to.

"No," he answered finally, because he wasn't going to talk to this girl about those things that he'd only ever spoken of to Ken and Mukuro. And, even then, only very late at night when they'd been plagued by their own nightmares and they needed something to focus on besides their own horrors. They didn't have any happy stories to tell each other, not really, so instead they'd always whispered secrets. Those things that would have normally been too awful to talk about during those first days and weeks and months they'd been together. They never talked about them outside of those moments, but in the dark they had been the only gifts they had to give. It's how he knew about Ken's cats and Mukuro's barely remembered other lives.

She just looked at him for a moment that seemed like an eternity and he resisted the urge to fidget. Now that he had a hat again, he'd taken to wearing it whenever they were outside their cell. With the hat on, he didn't feel as exposed and vulnerable as he had during the first months they'd been there, but he still didn't like to be so closely scrutinized. Eventually she nodded, mostly to herself it seemed, and glanced away towards the bathroom Ken had vanished into a few minutes before. "He likes to torment kids. It's like a hobby for him, I guess. People say that he gets off on it, you know? I mean, people say all kinds of shit and you can't believe half of it because people have nothing better to do with their time in here than make shit up and fuck with people, but I think it's probably true when it comes to him. So, if you're trying to figure out if you should be worried that he's taking an interest? Yeah, you should be worried. When he looked at me like that I killed some poor letch with a lunch tray for grabbing my ass. Not my proudest moment, and it bought me a couple truly delightful weeks spent in the Box, but he hasn't looked twice at me since so it was effective enough as a deterrent."

"Not an option," Chikusa replied immediately, he doubted that they'd be able to do anything that would result in both of them going to the Box at the same time. He wasn't sure precisely what the Box was, but he was quite certain it wasn't built for two and even if Ken wasn't exclusively his anymore… that didn't mean he wanted to leave him on his own with just M.M. to watch his back.

"Yeah, I figured. You boys are pretty much attached at the hip and, to be honest, that's probably what caught his interest. You might have noticed that not a lot of folks in here are, um, affectionate the way you guys are."

"Understood," Chikusa interjected immediately, his face warm. He's seen the way other people looked at them, the way it sets Ken's teeth on edge because the cartridge made him territorial in a way it didn't used to. He'd made it a point whenever he had the time and the ability to research the animals associated with Ken's cartridges ever since the day Ken lost it a little when they were escaping Vendicare last time. He knew that Ken had picked up little characteristics and instinctive inclinations from the cartridges he'd worn too long and too often.

He'd made a point of talking about it a little with Mukuro sometimes, because at the end of the day they were all someone's science experiments left to boil and cure without proper observation. Every scrap of information they'd stolen away from Esterneo on their individual conditions and situations had been little more than theory and conjecture. They hadn't known what the long-term effects would be, hadn't even known whether they'd even live long enough for that to be an issue at all.

Mukuro never talked about whatever issues he was having with his powers and he himself never spoke about the migraines or the occasional complete loss of depth perception, the way his perfect clarity of vision just seemed to collapse, usually when he was over-tired or when he spent too long without his glasses, into a mess of color lacking even the faintest hint of form. He'd even made the effort to keep those problems concealed, burying them under his concern for Ken and a hundred other mundane things he'd known Mukuro wouldn't poke at too deeply. At the end of the day, they would never be great at talking about their own failings, but their mutual concern for Ken had always been safer ground.

**-ooo-  
THEN  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 196  
**December 13

_The transformations probably put undue strain on his body that's being compensated for by the healing factor they incorporated. The trauma of the transformations alone probably would have killed him years ago if not for that. The problem is he tends to favor the more useful cartridges and he's only used the one in here and doing that is training his body to that form, at least that's my theory. You disagree?_

Mukuro still sounded so tired that he almost hated to talk to him about these things, but he worried…

_No, it's fine. We need to… it's fine, _Mukuro replied, waving off his concerns. _I'm going to be a little tired for a while yet._

_Okay. Aggressively territorial, overly affectionate, constantly in need of physical reassurance and he…_

Kissed me. He didn't really think it at Mukuro, but he felt him pick up on it nonetheless.

_Ah. _Mukuro replied, his voice quiet and thoughtful.

Chikusa was glad that he didn't have to explain about the kiss. He wouldn't have been sure what to say about the kiss, especially to Mukuro who seemed to find physical demonstrations of affection difficult to deal with at the best of times. Really, of the three of them, only Ken was good at that sort of thing though Chikusa wasn't adverse to it exactly just… Ken didn't want him to take it wrong and….

_You're not an idiot, Chikusa. You're both so… you need to figure this out. I'm not fit to be anyone's therapist, much less yours, I need you to figure this out on your own. He didn't kiss you because of the way the cartridge affects him anymore than you kill people because you think he's incapable of protecting himself. You both have terrible impulse control and you both make me want to bash your heads together sometimes. Repeatedly. I find all of this exhausting. _

Mukuro was many things, but he'd never been patient or subtle when it came to them as if he saved all the conniving, sly, artful bits of himself for enemies and strangers. The genuine Mukuro wasn't patient or subtle or sly, he was short-tempered and abrupt and really kind of an… asshole. He always felt strange even thinking curse words, something like guilty, maybe. As if someone had told him a long time ago, in another life maybe, that those words were forbidden, that something bad would happen if you used them. He still felt vaguely like giggling every time Ken or Lancia or even Mukuro- who did it much less frequently- cursed. He never did, of course, but he could always feel it there like hysteria, bubbling below the surface of his thoughts. Like he knew they were doing something wrong, but… he liked it. Liked the way all that cursing tasted like rebellion. And… asshole was the right word for it, for what Mukuro was when it was just the four of them, but he didn't mind that. Didn't mind that Mukuro was an… asshole, because that meant that Mukuro, the real Mukuro, was theirs. Just theirs.

_Just deal with it, okay? You're not an idiot, Chikusa. Just… just figure it out. _

**-ooo-  
NOW  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 160  
**January 18

The problem was he still wasn't sure what was the best way to deal with it. He liked things the way they were, the way Ken pressed against him at night and stayed close during the day, the easy rhythm of the banter and insults and conversation. Mukuro was right, of course, he usually was. The cartridge complicated things as it made Ken more high-strung, in need of greater reassurance than he usually was, but everything else… that was pretty much just how he'd always been. And he liked all of those things. He liked his world just as it was and admitting that he was maybe starting to want… other things… was difficult. That he sometimes thought too much and too often about Ken's fingers resting against his hip and tracing over his scars and Ken's lips and breath warm against his throat. About that quick kiss and the way Ken said he'd think about him when….

All those things were just another step down the road to everything changing. Ken having other friends, friends like this girl, were the first step and it had been a bitter one he didn't care for one little bit. He wasn't sure he'd like it any better if they became more intertwined than they already were, became more of a danger to each other and less useful to Mukuro than they already were with this devotion to each other that always trumped good sense. He wasn't even all that great at friendship sometimes, he knew that, he would probably be much worse at the kissing thing, at everything that came along with it.

Change had only very rarely worked in his favor and he wasn't sure he could take it if things went badly with Ken. If things didn't work out or if Ken didn't want… or if he couldn't handle it which he thought might be the most likely problem. So he found himself paralyzed at the crossroads, unable to move forward, unable to go back either, and he knew at some point circumstances would steal his choices away. And he knew waiting was cowardly that not making a choice was, in the end, the same as making a choice, but every time he thought about… about kissing him or about pushing him away… it was like he couldn't breathe.

This… this made things easier. Made the decision easier. If their relationship, such as it was, was putting Ken in danger, making him a target, then he could… he could fix that. That made things simple. And he liked simple things. If things had to change then he would always choose the path that kept Ken safer. Always.

Though it made him feel like a terrible coward.

"Understood," he whispered it again, mostly to himself.

**-ooo-  
****NOW  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 159  
**THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 19

**KEN**

Ken waited patiently until he was absolutely certain that M.M. was sleeping. The last damn thing he wanted for this conversation was an unintended audience. Finally, when her breathing was deep and slow and her heart rate steady, he yanked the cartridge out of his mouth and shoved it under his pillow. His head ached and he'd been simmering with rage for the better part of a day and the cartridge made it feel a thousand times worse. Made everything a thousand times worse. He just didn't trust himself not to accidentally break something if he left the damn thing in. He'd feel really awful if he hurt Chikusa, after all, even if he was a total asshole who obviously had it coming.

"So do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on or do I need to beat it out of you?" Ken grumbled, pulling himself up on Chikusa's bunk and punching him in the shoulder.

"What?" Chikusa commented as he lay there on top of his stupid blankets still dressed, still wearing his stupid hat even, as if he'd been expecting him and didn't want the vulnerability of being even down to just a t-shirt while they fought. And hell, maybe he had, he hadn't exactly been trying to hide the fact that Chikusa's behavior was confusing him and pissing him off. It only made him more pissed off that Chikusa sounded irritated. Like Ken was the one with a problem. He was just gonna fucking lay there rubbing his injured shoulder with that blank, vaguely surprised fucking expression, like maybe he thought Ken had no idea that he only gave blank face that good when he was hiding something.

"Fuck you and your _what_," he snarled. "You know damn well fucking _what_, Kappa. Don't be a dick."

"_You_ punched _me_," Chikusa replied with a frown as if that were the issue. As if Ken had no reason at all to be upset and was just going around punching people for shits and giggles. Which was really, _really_ fucking annoying.

So he punched him in the shoulder again, because it seemed like the thing to do. "Because you're being an _asshole_. What the _fuck_ is your problem?"

"Don't have a problem," Chikusa replied, his voice stiff and stilted and practically fucking screaming that something was wrong, wrong, desperately wrong.

He'd first noticed it yesterday when he'd come back from the bathroom to find M.M. and Chikusa sitting just where he left them, painfully awful at pretending to be totally casual. Like maybe he wouldn't be able to sense the tension between them. They were _always_ fucking weird around each other because Chikusa didn't like her yet and she didn't much like him either. But this had been different for the normal awkwardness because usually they didn't try to hide their discomfort. It was obvious, they were obvious, and neither of them seemed to give a flying fuck. The fact that they suddenly cared was what was enough to set his nerves on edge.

Acting like maybe he'd have no idea that they'd been discussing serious shit that probably involved him behind his fucking back. And it would have been fine if it had been personal shit, but that probably wasn't it. Chikusa didn't talk about personal shit all that often in the first place and he sure as shit wouldn't talk about it to M because Chikusa took a really long, long, _long_ time to warm up to people. Hell, it had taken him years before he'd been comfortable saying more than a few words at a time to _Lancia_. So, if it wasn't that then it meant that they were either fucking fighting, which would suck, but he could deal with that. Of course, if that had been the case Chikusa wouldn't have bothered to keep quiet on the subject. So, instead, he was pretty fucking sure that they were conspiring to protect him from some new bullshit or spare his fucking feelings about something and that… that was fucking _lame_. He wasn't some baby or some delicate fucking flower that needed to be coddled or shielded or what fucking ever. Or that maybe that M had decided to go behind his back and tell Chikusa about the fucking dog whistle and that would have been unbelievably fucking annoying, but he didn't think that was it.

Either way the fact that it was happening just three days after the hair-cutting bullshit just made it fucking worse, because he'd known, _known_ something was off. Chikusa had been quieter than usual and had been so quick to fucking play it off like it wasn't a big fucking deal. And then he'd just been acting so fucking _weird_. He'd been tense and he wasn't really eating much and he kept looking around like he expected some moustache-twirling, black hat wearing villain to leap out of the shadows at any moment. He hated seeing him like this. Hated knowing that it had something to do with him, but for some damn reason Chikusa was refusing to talk to him about it and that was weird and wrong and stupid. If it was something to do with him then he had a right to know about it.

He had thought about taking M aside and smashing her against the cell wall and putting his claws against her throat until she spilled every last word they'd spoken to each other, but… she was his friend. His very first friend and he wanted her to stay his friend and he was pretty damn sure that he couldn't get away with that kind of thing with friends. Besides, he was pretty sure it was mostly the cartridge talking anyway, identifying her as a threat to Chikusa or to him and taking out aggression on her that he should be aiming squarely at Chikusa. Because M was just his friend and he kind of wanted her to be Chikusa's friend too and he got that she wouldn't ever be that if she were just reporting back to him everything Chikusa said.

Chikusa, on the other hand, was _his_ and had always been _his_ and Chikusa was supposed to tell him the things that really mattered. He'd kind of thought they were trying to be more honest with each other. He'd been trying to be anyway and maybe… maybe that was the problem. Maybe Chikusa wasn't… didn't want… but he'd have thought that at least Chikusa would tell him if he was angry or upset or sad or… whatever this was. He really wasn't sure and he really wanted to know, _needed _to know, because he just didn't understand _why_. He didn't understand what he had done or what was going on at all.

All he knew was there was suddenly what felt like nothing but empty space between them and it was making him fucking nuts because Chikusa wasn't saying what was wrong. He was just sitting further away from him at meals and he wasn't leaning into him the way he usually did and he wasn't talking to him as much or in the same way that he usually did. He was tense and prickly and he'd insisted on sleeping alone last night, all night, and he hadn't even really said why and Ken hadn't pushed it. Had just accepted it and he hadn't gotten any sleep at all because his brain was running around and around like a hamster on a wheel trying to remember what he'd said, trying to figure out if maybe he just smelled really bad, or maybe he'd done something that had made things so….

And then he'd remembered that tension. He'd remembered that weird tension and the haircut and how quiet Chikusa had been since, even for him, and he knew, he just fucking knew that it wasn't anything he had done. It was something else. It was stupid fucking _secrets_. And maybe, maybe he wouldn't have minded, well, no, he _would have_, but he would have _dealt_ with it if it were something Chikusa really wanted. He'd do anything, be anything, if that was what it took to make Chikusa happy and content, because he knew the things he wanted weren't maybe the things Chikusa wanted and that was okay, he could deal with that, but… this wasn't Chikusa happy. This was… this was Chikusa something close to miserable and completely out of sorts and this was total _bullshit_. This was Chikusa being an asshole and he wanted, _needed_ to know why.

He thought seriously about biting him as Chikusa stared up at him mutinously and just continued to give him absolutely nothing to go on.

"You think I can't tell, Chikusa?" He growled, pitching his voice low and soft and crawling over him so he could sit on his damn hips and pin him to the bed, leaning forward so he could speak directly into his face. "You think I don't know when you're fucking _scared_, Kappa? I know this. I know _you_. So, just tell me. Just open your mouth and tell me. Just tell me, tell me what is freaking you out and I'll…"

"You!" The word is snapped out into the air between him and somehow it felt like Chikusa was the one suddenly doing the punching.

Oh.

Strangely, the pain isn't quite immediate. That feeling of being off kilter, of his world rocking off its axis is, but the pain isn't. He's been injured enough times to know that there's this moment when you take the hit, when its really bad, when your brain just kind of shuts it down, just decides that it's too much, that there's no way you can deal with this and so for a little while at least there's no pain at all. There's just… nothing. Maybe a throbbing, dizzy sensation, maybe a swell of warmth as the blood floods to the surface, but that's it. He always knows though, kind of, that at some point, some point soon, it's going to hurt though. There's always this stupid little voice in his brain saying, 'hey moron, this is gonna hurt like a bitch in a minute'. And he's always found that voice funny, because he knows that. He knows it's going to hurt and maybe he even thinks it's funny because he deserves it. Deserves the pain he's going to get because he was too slow or too stupid to see the blow coming.

When the first giggle slips out of his mouth, he slaps a hand over his lips like that'll help keep the rest in, but it doesn't. He's shaking so hard suddenly that he can't even keep the hand on his face and he knows that shaking doesn't have anything to do with the laughing, except that it does, because he wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it hadn't been that. It hadn't been… he hadn't thought he… he wasn't…

And just like that the laughter shuts off as realization rushes in to the fill the empty space with pain.

**-ooo-  
****CHIKUSA**

And he realizes with mute horror that that had come out all _wrong_ as Ken rocks back like he punched him and for a moment he doesn't even seem to be seeing him at all anymore. He just stares into the middle distance and then there's laughter, these soft sobbing giggles like hiccups and he's shaking so hard that the entire bed creaks and groans. Then the laugh is gone and shaking is gone and Ken scrambled back and away. His eyes are wide and panicked and he almost doesn't look like himself at all, because Ken's never been scared, not really, not obviously, not even back then. Not even when they were kids in a dark room with a man with a gun. A man who'd just killed the kid sitting next to them. He can count on one hand the number of times he's seen Ken really, truly afraid.

He blinks away the tears that are suddenly clouding his vision, because it hurts to see him like that, to know that he put that look there. He's pulling away and backing off the side of the bed, running away and he needs to stop him, needs him to understand. He doesn't know how to fix this, because that wasn't what he meant. That wasn't it at _all_ and he'd just been frustrated, because he was trying to keep him safe. And he knows he's messing everything up. That he's doing all the wrong things and he should have just told him everything from the very start, but he hadn't and now it feels like it's too late. And he's almost afraid to speak at all for fear that he'll say the wrong thing again, that he'll make things even worse. So he just shakes his head, hard and fast and grabs at Ken's shoulders, desperate for purchase. Fingers snagging and yanking at his shirt, bunching and pulling the fabric up around his shoulders, gripping it like a lifeline.

"_Please_," he chokes the word out past the fear that's strangling him.

Please just stop, please just listen, please don't leave, please just….

**-ooo-  
KEN**

"_Please._"

The word was just a whisper, but to Ken it seemed loud as a shotgun blast, startling him and stopping the terrible nightmarish cycle of logic and panic his brain had fallen into. It froze him in place, hanging half off the bed with Chikusa's fingers knotted awkwardly in his shirt.

Chikusa never said please. Never had to. As far as Ken was aware he'd never used that word in his whole life. It was a word other people used. He used it sometimes and Mukuro used it all the time and even Lancia said it from time to time, though mostly he didn't mean it, but Chikusa never did. It was too close to asking maybe and Chikusa didn't really like to ask for things. He gave things and he took things, but he almost never asked for things. Ken didn't know why that was and he'd never asked, but he'd noticed. And noticing made it important. Important enough that he was able to look at Chikusa again, to shove away his own pain and panic and really look at him.

The way Chikusa's blank expression had crumbled, broken down until he looked as horrified as Ken felt. How he just kept shaking his head back and forth dizzyingly fast and the way his fingers were digging in and tearing at his shirt, hauling at him like he was trying to pull him back, keep him close. Keep him from running away like he wanted, _needed_, to do because he'd never, ever thought about Chikusa being scared of him before. It had just never occurred to him and the idea was so big, so fucking awful it just seemed to eat the entire world and he couldn't….

"Not like that," Chikusa whispered, distress and panic and terror in his voice and on his skin so thick and heavy that Ken could almost taste them. And he tried to calm down and understand what Chikusa was saying, because he was easy to misunderstand sometimes. To push the panic down and wait, muscles quivering with tension, for something that made sense, something that meant this was one of those times when Chikusa used too few words to try to explain something and it made it impossible to understand, because if this was simple… if this was simple he…

"For you," he said finally and Ken felt something in his chest unclench at that even though he still didn't really get it. He collapsed boneless back to the bed as the tension that had held him rigid became like smoke, insubstantial, lingering thick in the air and in his lungs but no longer able to support his weight. He hunched a little, hugging his arms to his chest and he let Chikusa draw him in, pull him against his chest, eliminate the distance he'd put between them. He could handle that. He could handle anything, whatever it was, as long as it wasn't that other thing. That had been too much, too fucking awful.

"Never of you. Never," Chikusa whispered, his breath warm and moist against his cheek. He sniffled and Ken wanted to tell him it was okay, that he understood, that they were okay, but he _didn't_. He still didn't understand any of this. He still didn't understand what the fuck Chikusa was really trying to say, only what he wasn't saying and the fact that Ken kind of wanted to fucking punch him again for scaring the shit out of him, for whatever fucking nonsense bullshit idea had gotten into Chikusa's head. He didn't need Chikusa to be afraid for him.

That was fucking _stupid_.

"You're an idiot," Ken growled, digging his toes viciously into the sensitive dip between ankle and heel in Chikusa's long bony foot. Chikusa yelped and kicked him viciously in the shin in return. After several minutes of exchanging increasingly irritable kicks, Chikusa managed to catch him off balance and boot him straight out of the bed. He yelped, catching himself on the rail and swinging down onto his own bed. He poked his head back up over the edge only to have Chikusa pummel him with his pillow until he retreated laughing. Which was when M.M. woke up and told them to shut it and a guard came by and shined a light in on them that found them both collapsed into their beds pretending to sleep while their hearts raced.

And everything had seemed like it was okay. He'd climbed back up after the guard left and curled up next to Chikusa and dozed off for a while with Chikusa's fingers dancing restlessly over the knots in his spine. He'd dropped down to his own bed a few hours later just before checks and ducked back up again after the guard had moved on, ignoring Chikusa's soft, surprised voice.

"Just a little longer, Kappa. I'm really tired," he murmured, curling up again in the warm spot he'd left behind. He was almost asleep again when he felt Chikusa press in close around him, tucking his knees up behind his own and throwing an arm around his waist. And he must have fallen asleep like that because the next thing he knew Chikusa was prodding him awake so the guard wouldn't catch them when he came by to open their cell door. It wasn't until he was down in his own bed, pretending to sleep that he realized that Chikusa had never actually bothered to explain what he was afraid of and so he'd asked him about it after they got back to their cell from the shower room, before they went to breakfast, while M was out using the bathroom.

Chikusa had just given him that stupid, fucking blank look again and refused to say anything about it, like he'd decided that in order to avoid misunderstandings he just wouldn't talk about it at all.

He wasn't really sure why the hell he'd expected something different.

Probably because if Chikusa was an idiot, and he obviously _was_, than he was twice the damn idiot for expecting him not to dig his heels in like the stubborn jackass he was perfectly capable of being.

It hadn't even felt vaguely satisfying to punch him in the damn face, but he'd done it anyway. Not hard enough to really hurt him, not half as hard as he wanted to, but hard enough to make his knuckles ache as he stalked out of the cell.

**-ooo-  
****NOW  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 158  
**UNAFFILIATED  
FRANCE  
January 20

**FRAN**

This one looked nice.

She had a kind of plump, poufy sort of face. It was a little floppy in the cheeks maybe and wrinkly so it kind of reminded him of a dog he'd seen in someone's yard the other day.

The little one that had licked his knuckles and rolled over on its back for a belly rub. He had liked that one and it had liked him too. It hadn't even barked at him at all when he went into the house and took some fruit and a yogurt from the fridge. It just trailed after his wagging its tail enthusiastically as he'd looked at all their pictures and taken a little wooden figure that looked like a frog. He liked frogs.

There'd been another dog in the last town he'd visited before this one and that one had been mean and a little scary and had just kept bark-bark-barking at him when he sat down on the curb to eat the sandwich the man in the little shop at the end of the street had made for him. That one had been really annoying and he'd just wanted to eat his sandwich (which had been really good and crunchy though maybe a little dry). He'd been really tired too and his feet hurt because he'd been walking all day.

So, he'd told the ugly, scary dog it had to be quiet or the fairies would come and sew its yapping mouth shut. He'd warned it twice even, but dogs were really bad at listening sometimes just like people and the fairies had come and then… no more yapping dog mouth. It had been kind of funny how surprised it had seemed, but it had calmed down pretty fast and he had liked how quiet the street had been after that. There'd been some wind chimes somewhere and he could hear them clanking in the breeze. It had been a nice sound, quiet like the street and he'd eaten the rest of his sandwich and he'd really enjoyed it.

Then, of course, that woman had come out and started screaming about her dog. He hadn't liked her either, but he'd already finished his sandwich so he'd been about to leave anyway. So, he'd stood up and started off down the street and just put his hands over his ears and told her she was too loud and that she kind of looked like a fish, both of which were true things.

She'd thrown a garden gnome at him.

Which hadn't been very nice.

So, of course, the fairies had thrown it back.

He was sure they hadn't meant to throw it that hard, but sometimes it was difficult to gauge these things. There had been an awful lot of blood though so he'd turned and left in a hurry before anyone else came by and noticed because that would be a real pain. The police were always very nice and helpful at first, but they never liked his hair or his face and they always asked awkward questions that he didn't want to answer about _parents_ and _homes_ and if he talked to them about the fairies then they'd take him to the hospital and he did_ not_ enjoy the hospital. They had terrible food and the nurses poked you with things and there was an awful _lot_ of screaming when he thought up something else to wear because the hospital gowns were drafty and uncomfortable.

No, he didn't like hospitals at all.

So, he'd left the yard and the woman and her dog behind and hurried away. There'd been a treehouse in a yard a few streets away that had seemed like a nice place to take a nap. He'd never climbed a tree before, but there was a ladder so it wasn't too difficult though it tired him out pretty quickly and his arms hurt a bit. The treehouse wasn't too much more than a rickety platform with a roof and a couple of holey walls, but there was a nice breeze and the leaves of the tree rustled pleasantly and so he kind of liked it. He could take off his coat and use it as a pillow and the floor was nice and cool and it was easy enough to ignore the wail of distant sirens as he drifted off.

But all that had been months ago and while he liked wandering from place to place it was really cold out and he was just about ready to settle down someplace nice for a while which was why he was at the market shopping for an old woman to go home with. He'd tried living with a bunch of different people over the last few weeks, but none of them had really worked out. Not that it really bothered him, but it was kind of a pain to have to move on after only a couple days or a week. He really wanted a more permanent living situation where he didn't have to worry about nosy neighbors or grabby hands or traveling or…

"Oh, well, hello there," the old woman with the poufy, floppy face said, stopping in front of where he sat on an overturned milk crate next to the tomato bin. She smiled down at him and that seemed like a strange reaction. Hardly anyone smiled at him like that even when he was pretending to be his or her offspring/grandchild/cousin/nephew/ward.

"Hello," he replied, unsure what else to say. He wasn't prepared for this sort of situation. He didn't like talking to people straight away like this. He liked to watch them for a while first, think about what they liked so he could say the right things.

"You're here on your own, aren't you?" She asked, hitching her vegetable bag over her shoulder.

"Yes," Fran answered because he wasn't sure where this was going, but he didn't mind finding out.

"Would you like to have lunch with me? You look like you could use something to eat and I could use the company."

He liked her face and no one had ever asked him to lunch before so he went along. He had chopped steak and hot cocoa in a big mug that felt nice and warm against his palms. She talked a lot about her family that she never saw because they lived in Munich- which was in Germany though he had no idea what that actually was or why he should care- and they were very busy with their own lives and she didn't travel as much as she used to. She didn't ask him any questions and didn't seem to mind that he didn't talk much, content to fill the silence with cheerful chatter about people he'd never met and places he'd never been. She had a nice voice, deep and soft, so he didn't mind listening to it even if he didn't really care about any of the things she was saying. By the time he'd finished his cocoa and she volunteered to get him a second cup he'd made his decision.

"You live by yourself, right?" He asked, interrupting a long story about a cow and a boy named Fredrick.

She smiled kindly and nodded, "I do. For a long time now."

"Is it far from town?"

"My home? Yes. I have a little place in the hills about ten kilometers outside Saint-Julien."

"Are you lonely?"

"Sometimes, I suppose, but I've become accustomed to it so I don't mind the quiet."

"Any pets?"

"I have a poodle that used to belong to my son and a ferret that I call Monsieur Tibbles," the old woman replied pleasantly, obviously quite pleased with her pet choices. "He's quite a nice, frisky little fellow."

He wasn't sure what a ferret was, but he knew a poodle was a type of dog so it was probably something like that. "Okay, I've decided. I'm going to come live with you, Grandma."

The old woman blinked a few times, "Pardon me?"

**-ooo-  
****NOW  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 157  
**THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 21

**M.M**

"Oh my god, Mukuro wasn't kidding around, your English is _awful_," she commented, shaking her head.

Ken wrinkled his nose, flipping her off from where he was currently collapsed on the floor in the middle of the cell. He seemed to like the floor for some unfathomable reason. Or at least that was what she assumed based on the fact that he laid and napped on it any time he wasn't absolutely required to be in his bed. It was really weird. Usually he'd drag a blanket down there because the concrete was freezing this time of year and Ken hated the cold, but for whatever reason he seemed to be into the cold today. Right now he was laying face down on the concrete, his cheek pressed against it though his face was turned towards her. "Like yours is so great?"

M.M. smiled, "No, mine is awful too, but at least I _know_ it's bad."

"Hey! I know my English is bad!"

"No, you _think _your English is bad, it's _actually_ earthshakingly terrible. You guys lived in New York for how long?"

"Nine months, three days," Chikusa answered softly, from where he was curled up on his bunk, back to the wall and knees pulled tight against his chest.

"Then how the hell did you never notice that you were mispronouncing the word 'sandwich'? Seriously, did you guys just never talk to people while you were living there?"

"Shut up! Aren't you supposed to be teaching us Japanese?"

"Sure, I'll continue to teach you Japanese the second you can say 'sandwich' correctly. If you can't take simple instructions, I can't teach you anything."

"Samwish. Happy?"

"No. That's still garbage. Sandwich. Sand. Witch. Hard consonants mush-mouth. Say it like its two words, maybe that'll help."

"Sand-fucking-witch. Sandwich. Now can you stop making fun of my English and get back to the next language I'm gonna be fucking horrible at already?"

M.M. sniffed, mildly annoyed that Ken thought so little of her teaching skills. "You're not going to be horrible at it. I'm going to make you spectacular at it, relax."

Chikusa grimaced, raising his hands to obscure the expression under the guise of fixing his glasses. On second thought, that might have been a smile rather than a grimace, but as she'd never actually seen him smile and had a difficult time believing he was actually capable of the expression. Whatever it was, he must have made some noise with it as suddenly Ken flipped over on to his back and glared at him with narrowed, bloodshot eyes, "Shut it, Kappa."

M.M. frowned as it occurred to her that it was the first time she'd seen Ken look at Chikusa directly in days. He'd even started asking her to help him out with his hair in the shower room yesterday, glaring irritably at the floor all the while. She felt kind of bad about it, honestly, but she wasn't sure what to do about it exactly or even whether she had any business interfering at all. After all, she might even have been partly responsible for whatever was going on because she'd told Chikusa all that about Birds. Not that he wouldn't have just figured it out some other way, he probably would have, but she was pretty sure it was right after she opened her big mouth about why he might be interested in them that things had really started going wrong. Of course, it could have just as easily been the mysterious haircut that had created the tension or Ken not telling Chikusa about the whistling sound (because he obviously hadn't, he was still trying to play it off as nothing whenever he winced or cursed randomly).

Whatever had started it, it had now gotten completely out of hand and it was kind of like living in the Twilight Zone. She hadn't even realized how accustomed she'd become to them until all of a sudden Ken was moody and irritable and Chikusa was stiff and standoffish and even quieter than usual. And they were so obviously, completely, studiously ignoring each other. And she really, really wasn't sure what the hell either of them thought they were going to accomplish with this nonsense. But it was uncomfortable and irritating and it was making it almost impossible to teach them anything because for all they weren't talking and kept pretending like they weren't interested in what the other one was doing, they were so damn focused on each other that it was difficult to pull their attention for more than a minute or two at a time.

She'd tried talking to Ken about it a couple times, but he'd sullenly told her to mind her own damn business or just changed the subject whenever she tried to bring it up. It was such a far cry from the almost overly enthusiasm that he'd been treating her with even a week before that it made her angry. At both of them. Because, dammit, she didn't _want_ a friend, she didn't need one either. She just… didn't want to watch them do this. That was all it was. It was just that it was really annoying. Which was the primary reason she pulled Chikusa aside the next time Ken stormed out of the cell to go to the bathroom.

"What the hell are you hoping to accomplish with this?" She asked bluntly, leaning forward into his personal space and earning herself a warning look. She saw his fingers twitch towards his wrist and narrowed her eyes. The last thing she wanted was to end up on the wrong end of one of those poison needles. "I know I said you probably attracted his interest because you guys were close, but… what you guys are doing isn't attracting any less attention, you know? Besides, Birds is nasty business, but there are three of us and between us we should be able to handle anything he throws our way. All right, _why _are you staring at me like that?"

If there was one thing about Chikusa that bothered her, and there were several, but if she had to pick just one, it would be that dead-eyed blank look he got on his face sometimes. Like his alien overlords had forgotten to mention to him that in order to blend in properly with the human race he needed to emote constantly like a normal person rather than just on special occasions.

"More complicated than that," Chikusa murmured finally, digging into his pocket and pulling out a handful of crumpled little strips of paper and holding them out to her like a grandfather trying to give a child candy.

She took them reluctantly, grumbling a little under her breath as she stalked over to her bed. "Seriously, you can't just _tell me_?"

She flopped down and immediately began to spread the little papers out so she could read them properly and immediately wished she hadn't.

_Is a lion without a mane still a lion?_

_If you were gone he'd miss you at all, he'd be fine without you._

_Is it the shower or the water that frightens him so?_

_Does he growl like that when you touch him?_

_If he doesn't like to sleep alone…_

"_Fucking gross_," M.M. hissed, crumpling the lot in her hands. "Is there a reason you're keeping these besides just torturing yourself with them?"

Chikusa shrugged, his gaze trained somewhere in the vicinity of her shoes. She decided that was answer enough and escorted those tiny horrors over to the little sink in the corner so she could give them a proper burial at sea and then maybe scrub her hands a couple thousand times to get all the third-hand gross off them. "Was that all of them?" She asked finally, once the papers were only a terrible memory.

"No."

She sighed and shut off the water, turning back to face him. She didn't know how she felt about Chikusa, honestly. He was weird, definitely. He wasn't like Ken. Ken was easy to like. He was eager and kind of funny and honest and personable. He was easy and accessible in every way that Chikusa was complicated and closed off. Chikusa was a fortress that Ken scaled and conquered with the ease of long practice, but that kept itself cut off from the world at large. She was pretty sure that no matter what she said or did, she'd be standing on a distant shore, never able to move an inch closer. That didn't mean that she shouldn't try. "How's he been getting them to you?"

"Bird drops them on my pillow in the morning, just after dawn."

"Okay. Thought about killing the messenger?"

"Poisoned a couple. They probably died. He has more."

"Right. Okay. Thought about just telling Ken? Not about the messages, I maybe get why you don't want to tell him about those, he'd probably gut that revolting motherfucker like a fish without a second thought and there goes your 'we're just a bunch of helpless kids' defense. But at least about Birds himself? He's obviously responsible for that haircut. So why not at least tell him about that?"

Chikusa shrugged, looking away.

"Look, I'm not telling you what to do here. We don't know each other and we aren't friends, I get that. I don't even want to be your friend. You creep me out. And, really, at the end of the day, you're a big boy and you probably won't listen to me anyway, but I'm still going to say it. You should tell him everything. He's gonna find out one way or another and… _why_ are you shaking your head like that? You're going to give yourself whiplash or something. Use your words, Chikusa. I know you know more than twelve or I wouldn't have to bother teaching you Japanese."

"Want him safe," Chikusa murmured and that made no sense at all. She knew there were a lot of things she didn't understand about them, she'd overheard enough to know that Ken had impulse control issues or something, but that wasn't any kind of reason to keep him in the dark about this. She also knew that Ken was crazy about him and even if he didn't feel the same way, he had to know that just giving him the cold shoulder was a bad way to handle things.

"Then you need to talk to him, because what you two are doing? It isn't working for either of you. You both look like shit and someone is going to stab you because you're not paying a lick of attention to anything but each other. So, tell him about Birds, start with that. He probably paid someone else to do it. He doesn't do a whole lot of his own dirty work, I don't think."

"Guard?"

"Probably. Wouldn't surprise me if some of these bastards were making a little money on the side from pulling shit like that and Ken isn't exactly well liked, you know? He mouths off _a lot_."

"Yeah."

"Though I still don't understand how he managed to sleep through it. He threw a shoe at me the other day because I was chewing my gum too loudly."

Chikusa shrugged again which wasn't the least bit helpful.

**-ooo-  
KEN**

He was dozing, not quite asleep and not quite awake, just zoning out. He knew it was late or maybe early because the guard had just passed by (cigarette smoke and dirt and BO and egg salad, a little whiskey on his breath like he'd taken a shot just before driving in to work or in the break room with his lunch). His head ached, his eyes felt dry and scratchy whenever he opened them so he kept them closed. It didn't make much difference, they still ached regardless, but at least they felt less like they were just gonna fucking fall out this way. There was nothing to see anyway. It was dark and he couldn't get comfortable. M was asleep in her bed, breathing evenly (minty toothpaste, that terrible floral perfume, deodorant that he thought was supposed to smell like coconut… it didn't really).

The ache in his head had been with him all day, pounding between his temples like a heartbeat. It had been a little better when they were outside in the yard, but once they came back to their cell it was worse than ever. He stayed in bed rather than go to dinner because he was pretty sure he'd just throw it back up. Better to just curl up in bed, on top of the blankets because it was too hot beneath. He knew it was cold, they hadn't fixed the fucking heating or anything, but he'd been unbearably hot for hours. He hadn't really slept in days, not since that last time he'd fallen asleep with Chikusa that last night. It'd been a couple of days since then and, not that he'd been sleeping all that well even before that, after days of no sleep at all… nothing seemed quite real. And sometimes he blinked and minutes seemed to have gone by like he'd passed out between one moment and the next, but he'd been unable to stay passed out. Like he'd be listening to M talk about something and he'd close his eyes and open them again and she was talking about something completely different. Sometimes he saw spots in the corners of his vision too, like little flares of light and that was just another reason to keep his eyes firmly shut.

And then there was that fucking noise. That dog whistle, if M was right and he knew she probably was, that went off at random fucking intervals and just went crawling straight up his fucking back like the sound of nails against a chalkboard. This lingering, grating, awful fucking noise that was bad enough all on its own, but because there was no set schedule, no rhyme or fucking reason for when it started or how long it lasted, he couldn't fucking anticipate it and that made it so much worse than it might otherwise have been. He couldn't stand to wear the cartridge at all anymore, because every time he was wearing the cartridge when that fucking sound went off, it was fucking crippling. It'd happened once when he was in the bathroom and the sound had just fucking echoed through the room. He'd woken up on the bathroom floor, in a pool of blood and vomit and tears, his nails thick with blood and gore, the cartridge held tightly in his hand, his mouth aching where he'd clawed the damn thing out. He'd stared at his hands for the longest fucking time and he was just so fucking scared because he… he didn't remember doing that. And if he could do that to himself, he could do worse things to other people. To Chikusa and M, to Lancia if he ever fucking actually showed up.

He'd cleaned up as best he could, but he'd stopped wearing the cartridge after that. It made him edgy and he felt like he was painting a fucking target on his back doing it, but he couldn't… couldn't take the chance. If he thought he could get away with it, he'd just wear the fucking earplugs all the time, but he'd tried that once and he couldn't even fucking walk with those in. Just fell right the fuck over like he relied on his hearing for everything, so much so that it tossed his balance to be without it. Which was weird and kind of fucking pathetic.

He'd noticed the way Chikusa had watched him after the bathroom incident, like he could tell something had happened, like he could tell something wasn't right. He probably could, but fuck if he was gonna tell him when Chikusa wouldn't tell him anything. So, he'd just gone back to his cell and tried to pay attention during fucking Japanese lessons and tried to ignore how blurry his vision seemed sometimes and how much his mouth still ached, raw and painful for hours, long after it would normally have healed up.

Everything was so fucked up.

He tried not to think about Chikusa on the bunk above him. It didn't really work. He knew he was awake, could practically feel him tossing and turning up there, restless, even if he couldn't hear him with the plugs in. But if he opened his eyes, he knew he would see the mattress dip and press against the bars above him as Chikusa shifted his weight from one side to the other. They hadn't really talked in days, not since Ken had hit him that last time, and he kept thinking about maybe talking to him. Trying to pull him aside again or just pretending like nothing was wrong to see if Chikusa would just go along with it. If maybe they could just ignore the awkwardness between them and go back to at least talking. Even if all the other stuff was off limits, he missed just being able to talk to him and call him names and tease him and… he wasn't sure how things had gone so wrong in less than a week. Wasn't sure how to fix things.

If Mukuro or Lancia were around he could ask them, but they weren't. Lancia was supposed to have been released days ago, but he hadn't been. He'd tried asking the guards about it, but they wouldn't tell him anything. Mukuro hadn't been back either, but that wasn't really weird on unusual. Mukuro had always come and gone, but before it had always felt like Mukuro would always know if they needed him. Would just be able to tell and maybe he could when he was close, but he was miles and oceans away probably and he wasn't there to knock their heads and tell them to get it together. It felt like everything that was important to him was slipping away like sand through his fingers and he couldn't stop it. He didn't know how to fix things with Chikusa. Didn't know if Lancia or Mukuro were okay.

Everything was just so fucked up.

There was a soft thump and the cheap mattress dipped and Chikusa slid onto the bed beside him and he was afraid to open his eyes. Afraid that this was a dream, that he'd finally fallen asleep and he'd open his eyes and he'd be alone and that was just too unbearably pathetic. It smelled like him at least and it acted like him, tentative like he was unsure of his welcome, unsure if he should come closer and Ken didn't want to reach out and scare him away. Didn't want to scare him away even though Chikusa had said he wasn't actually scared of him… he still couldn't help being a little afraid, because he didn't feel like he was in control of anything at all. He felt like he was balancing on the edge of a cliff and his balance was shot to shit and any second he was just gonna fall into the abyss. It was bad and it was just getting worse and worse every day and if he fell… if he fell, he didn't wanna take Chikusa down with him.

Chikusa's fingers slid over the shell of his ear before sliding in to pluck the plug out of his ear. "Ken?"

"Chikusa?" He replied, his voice hoarse and as tired as he felt.

"Don't know if I'm doing the right thing."

"You know, I think that's the most words I've every heard you string together into a single sentence."

"Shut up."

"I don't know what you're trying to do, Kappa," he answered honestly. "You won't talk to me."

"We're talking now."

"You know what I mean."

"Yes."

"Then would you please just fucking talk to me already?"

Chikusa ran a shaking hand through his hair and it was both comforting and kind of awful, because he wanted Chikusa to touch him, but he also hated being reminded of how short his hair was now. Just another thing he'd lost, but at least that had been taken from him. At least that wasn't his fault. "Know who did this."

"What? Seriously?"

"Man named Birds. Don't know how. Paid off a guard maybe."

It felt strangely good to have a name, to have someone to blame for something, to have a target for his anger. And he was _angry_. So fucking angry. "Well, that's creepy as fuck. Why would he do something like that?"

"Don't know. Watches us. Like we're meat."

Ken growled low in his throat, opening his tired, aching eyes at last. And Chikusa was inches away, face pale and drawn and he seemed thinner than he had been, "You've been worrying about this? This is what you've been freaking out over?"

Chikusa nodded, averting his eyes so it felt like the truth, but not the entire truth. He growled again, snagging Chikusa's hand from his hair and dragging it down to press it between both of his. They could keep going like this, round and round, keeping these little fucking secrets from each other. Trying to protect each and getting mad and being stubborn and he felt awful and he was so fucking worn out and everything _hurt, _but nothing hurt more than fighting with him. Then falling to pieces because Chikusa wasn't there to hold him together. He didn't want to do this anymore. Whatever Chikusa was hiding… he didn't even care anymore. He just… he just wanted him to _stay_.

"Hey Kappa? I think something's really wrong with me. I feel really sick."

"You can't get sick," Chikusa whispered, pressing his free hand against Ken's forehead and wincing. "You're really hot."

"That's what he said," Ken snickered and Chikusa just sighed. His hand was cool where it rested against Ken's forehead.

"You're not funny," Chikusa shoved at his shoulder and he smiled.

"I am though. Everybody says so."

"Nobody says that."

"Yeah, but you think so and that's all I really care about," Ken grinned, though it faded soon enough. "Can we just… just pretend everything's okay? Can we just pretend that you're not fucking lying to me about whatever the hell it is that you're lying to me about and that I can't practically smell the lie on you and just pretend that everything is okay again? Just for a little while? I feel like shit and everything aches and some asshole in here has a dog whistle or something and they keep blowing it all the damn time and it really fucking sucks."

"Probably the same guy," Chikusa murmured, his fingers flitting across Ken's cheeks and forehead and nose and lips like nervous butterflies uncertain where to land, unable to settle. "Don't understand why you're sick. You've never been sick. You didn't have dinner?"

"No, it's… I feel like I'm gonna throw up. I don't know. Maybe I just need to sleep or something, but it's…" he shrugged, closing his eyes because they were beginning to really ache again and he kind of wanted to just claw them out of his skull. "It keeps getting worse."

"What do you need?"

"I don't know. For you to stop freaking out just because some old fucking pervert is harassing me and probably thinks about us when he jerks it? That'd be a start. I won't let him fucking touch you if that's what you're worried about."

"Not worried about that," he whispered and Ken sighed.

"Shut up, I know. What I don't know is why the fuck you didn't just tell me. It's not like some old perv creeping on us is going to freak me out more than you just not wanting to be near me. You're an idiot."

"Sometimes," Chikusa agreed and Ken frowned, brushing his fingers over the side of his face. Chikusa closed his eyes, turning his cheek into the touch and… that was nice.

"I don't get it, Kappa. Wish you'd let me help."

"You're sick."

"Yeah, well, nobody's perfect."

"Yeah," He could hear the amusement in Chikusa's voice and it gave him the confidence to ask.

"Stay with me?"

"Okay," Chikusa whispered in reply and he was asleep in moments. He must have been really tired. Maybe he hadn't been sleeping well either. It was funny that that thought made him feel both worse and better all at once.

He laid there in the dark for a long time, listening to Chikusa breathe, before leaning in so he could press his burning forehead against the cool skin of Chikusa's cheek.

He wondered as he slid the earplug back in place and slowly drifted off to sleep he finally allowed himself to wonder whether he was dying. If his body was finally rejecting all the things they'd done to it, all the modifications they'd made. It seemed like a pretty stupid fucking way to go, his body just breaking down around him like this. Nah, fuck that. He'd always figured when he died, because he knew they all would at some point, that it would be violent and messy and he liked to think maybe he'd go out protecting them because that seemed like it wouldn't be an awful way to go. That was a death he could live with. Or not live with, what the fuck ever.

Nah, dying like this would just be too fucking lame.

Yeah, no, fuck _that_.

**-ooo-  
NOW  
****DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 156  
**THE GANG  
NAMIMORI  
January 22

**MITSURU/MUKURO**

The boy's name was Hizimori Mitsuru, though everyone called him Mi. He liked his brother, baseball and a girl named Yui. He lived in Namimori near the edge of town and he had a scratch on the back of his hand.

It wasn't a big scratch really, but it was brown and scabby and it ran from his thumb to his wrist and so his Mom had smeared some ointment on it and let it be since she didn't want to cover his hand in bandages over one little scratch. He'd gotten the scratch from a big girl he'd passed while walking home from school yesterday pushing his bike up the big hill behind his house. She'd said she was sorry, but she'd said it the same way his brother said 'sorry' when he wouldn't take him along for baseball practice or when he went out with his friends. The kind of sorry you said, but didn't really mean at all or maybe it was the same way his Mom said 'that's nice, dear' and his brother said 'in a minute' like they weren't actually paying attention. Yeah, it had been something like that. Like she hadn't even really been there at all, like someone else had done the scratching and she was just doing the polite thing by saying 'sorry'.

It had been really weird.

**-ooo-**

Mukuro blinked, shaking off the kid's thoughts of baseball and what they were having for dinner. Thoughts of his puppy and how he was going to play with him when he got home with the new ball he'd gotten him and how he was definitely going to teach him to fetch. Sighing, he rubbed a hand over the boy's spiky brown hair and leaned the bike against the fence, sitting down beside it to give himself time to orient to this new body that was so much smaller and weaker than his own.

He yawned heavily, rubbing a hand over his face. He hadn't slept in days and while that wasn't an entirely new experience, as he had never slept particularly well or often, it still wore on him in the wake of everything that had happened. He mostly just wanted to light the whole world on fire and watch it burn. To destroy the mafia and Vongola and Esterneo and everything in one fell swoop so they were the only ones that remained. At least then he wouldn't have to worry anymore about who to trust and where to go and what to do. It was exhausting, caring this much, and not something he'd ever wanted. He could feel it chewing at him the way a dog might gnaw at a bone, whittling it down until nothing remained but the hollow core, black and brittle and utterly breakable.

So, now there was the plan, this ridiculous plan that would likely only end in tears and blood and pain, but when one was lacking for options even the bad ones started to look good. It had taken the better part of a week to wind his way from body to body before he'd finally reached Japan. The distance was such that he could only use people who were compatible for more than a few minutes at a time making the pickings slim and the chore of transferring from host to host increasingly difficult. It was longer and farther than he'd ever attempted before and he'd never been out of his body for so long and he was utterly exhausted. He was raw and aching, stretched painfully thin and he wanted little more than to return and have a rest, check in on the others, but he needed to finish this first. They needed somewhere to go, a safe place, and once he had that then he could return.

Namimori, as it turned out, was a generally quiet and rather beautiful little town located in the Mie Prefecture in Iga. It was a cool place, but not overly cold even in the dead of winter, or so it seemed as his body was wearing a winter school uniform and no extra coat even though it was only late January. He could feel the brisk air against his borrowed skin, but it wasn't particularly uncomfortable for the boy. From what little he'd been able to glean about the successor to Vongola, he was young, very young, perhaps the same age as they were or close to it and he likely attended Namimori Middle, but he'd been able to find very little information on him beyond that… which was peculiar.

There had been really no end of information to be gained on previous candidates, the sons of Vongola Nono, and some of the more prominent members of the Italian branch of the Famiglia. He'd even been able to ferret out enough information on Xanxus, the candidate favored by the Famiglia in general, that he thought he'd be able to leverage that against Vongola at some point. But for as much information as he'd been able to find on the various members and factions of the primary branch, he's been able to dig up practically nothing when it came to the branch of the family that had left Italy for Japan in the Famiglia's earliest days. It was as if the Japanese branch of the Famiglia had been completely uninvolved in Vongola since that time, but if that were the case then why would that man have chosen a successor who was unknown and unremarked with no connections to the current version of the Famiglia.

It made no sense.

Perhaps if this boy were uncommonly strong or showed the sort of limitlessly potential that came around once in a generation, something of that nature might make the decision comprehensible at least. He would have to make a point of attempting to track Fuuta de la Stella as the little record keeper would probably be one of the few reliable sources of information on the Vongola boy. That would at least give them a place to start without alerting the new Vongola and his lackeys to their arrival. Which, of course, brought him back around to why he had come here in the first place.

They couldn't headquarter themselves in Namimori, as that would likely get them found and returned to Italy long before they had a chance to ferret out the Vongola. Fortunately, Namimori was a large town situated next to another town of similar size. Kokuyo was close enough that, if he were correct in his assumptions about Esterneo, it should allow them the security of being within striking distance of Vongola while still being far enough away not to be immediately observed and detected by Vongola. Better still, of course, if he could find them a place that was near the town border. Something secluded, but still within each reach of both the Kokuyo Junior High and Namimori Junior High. Half the reason he'd come here today and possessed this boy in particular was to look at one such place to see if it would be suitable for their needs and purposes.

His body's stomach gurgled and growled and he glared down at it irritably. The boy had skipped lunch in favor of saving his money to buy a toy for his mutt. Ridiculous. He'd have to leave some notion behind that would require the boy to eat properly or he'd never be able to get anything done if he persisted in this sort of behavior. For now though, he would just have to put up with it, he needed to get going if he was going to make it over to look at the place before he needed to turn his attention back to his own body. He knew he was reaching the limit of what he could handle.

He gave the bike at his side a dubious look. He'd never learned how to ride a bike. Never bothered though he supposed there had been opportunity enough over the years. There had simply too much else to do and he'd spent much of his time indoors in Mumbai and New York where it might have made the most sense to learn. The boy he'd been before he was Mukuro Rokudo… he wasn't sure what he had done, but he was reasonably sure it had had little enough to do with bike riding. Mi knew, fortunately, so he could slip that information away and absorb it. Just another ill-gotten talent for the pile, but the knowledge would be theoretical and thus useful only in this body.

He stood up, stretching and reached for the bike. Getting on was easy enough and though he wobbled a fair bit at first, he didn't fall and after a minute he was coasting smoothly down the street, legs pumping and hands tight on the rubber grips that covered the handlebars. The physical exertion of the ride might tire him out a bit more than walking would, but he'd inevitably save more than enough time to compensate for it. Plus, he might have need of this boy's body again when they came here so memorizing this skill probably wasn't a complete waste.

Unlike language skills and the knowledge gleaned from school courses, he wouldn't be able to learn this ability and keep and apply it within his own body. Like any other physical skill, it was one part theoretical knowledge and two parts physical muscle memory that made one successful at it. He was fluent in fourteen languages, cursorily familiar with fifteen more, but he couldn't ride a bike or skip rope or throw a baseball with any particular speed or accuracy in his own body despite having possessed enough people who had those particular skills over the years.

On some levels he'd found this restriction grating, as he'd typically hold on to just enough theoretical knowledge about any given skill that he often found his own body attempting to do some of these things instinctually only to find himself hopelessly lacking and frustrated by his inability to do any of them well or most of them at all. If he wasn't paying very strict attention it was difficult to keep straight sometimes what was a skill he himself actually possessed and what was not. It would have been infinitely easier if he could simply forget all about these physical skills when he returned to his own body, but he never did. Not for want of trying, of course, but he'd still never managed it to find a way to do so and that was often infuriating. Primarily because many of those physical skills weren't so benign as bike riding or fishing or throwing a baseball.

No, most of the physical skills he had picked up over the years were of the sort he desperately wished to have never needed. He had, after all, possessed a lot of unsavory people and there were some things he'd just rather not be able to do or remember at all really when he returned to his own body, but… he always did. Always. The worst part of that, of course, was that there were some things that sat firmly at the crossroads of knowledge and physical, things he was sure he would be able to do if he wanted in his own body with no trouble at all, but he had not the least inclination to challenge that notion. Things he sometimes absorbed on purpose and sometimes by accident because his mark was thinking too intently about these things or happened to do these things while he was riding along rather than driving as he sometimes did when the activities made him uncomfortable and he was unable to abandon the body for one reason or another.

He'd known forty-three ways to dismantle a human body, twenty-two sexual positions spread across multiple genders. He knew how to make people moan in ecstasy and scream in unimaginable pain any number of different ways by the time he had turned (what he was reasonably sure was) fourteen. More often than not he tried not to think about these things. He locked them away as deep as they would go. Fed them to that black, fathomless pit within his tattered soul where he kept the worst of what he was, where he locked the impulse to hurt them, himself, the world and every last person in it. Sometimes he needed to dredge these things up, to apply them in one infiltration or another which was why he thought he'd be able to use them in his own body, but afterwards he always locked them away again though he always felt the lingering marks they left behind, like grease stains on paper napkins.

The process of inflicting and enduring pain rarely bothered him in any meaningful way. He couldn't feel it and he'd seen and done enough horrifying and terrible things in is life to be overly affected by such things. The other things though… those things always made him feel vaguely ill even when he wasn't controlling the body directly, wasn't an active participant. He still remembered the first time, as he remembered everything, and how he'd spent what seemed like hours or days sitting on the floor of the shower letting hot water splash over him after.

He remembered Ken with his big brown eyes, wide as saucers, staring at him as if he were both a stranger and something precious simultaneously. He remembered laying on the filthy bathmat cold and wet and pressed between them and asking them to stay, but never telling them why.

There had been reasons, so many reasons, why he had been too distracted in New York to notice that something was wrong and that had certainly been one of them.

He'd always wondered if this was something they'd planned or if it was just a natural consequence of his situation, the ability to retain knowledge and the inability to forget it. The complete inability to feel pain when he was in possession of the bodies of others, only the vagaries of pleasure and the way even that left him shaky and vaguely sickened in the aftermath when he returned to his own body. Like they'd adapted both his soul and his body for efficiency, because even in his own body physical pain was dull, pleasure virtually non-existent, as if the circuits had never connected properly when his soul had been jammed back into this body on that operating table. He supposed he was grateful for that in a way, whatever the cause. It made it easier not to care about things when he couldn't connect with them too deeply. Because that was part of the problem with possessing people, infiltrating their lives, you needed to do it right or it wasn't worth bothering at all. If you became too invested there was little point and even less profit to be had in it.

The amusement park had been closed for the better part of five years and it showed. There was only road leading into the place and the road was falling into disrepair, the pavement was cracked brown tufts of grass poking through here and there as he stood up on the pedals, pushing harder to encourage the bike up the road as it became steeper. Mitsuru's breath came in harsh pants, muscles straining and he was relieved when he reached the gate at the end of the road. He could see buildings in the distance and the sign over the gate was pockmarked with rust and bird droppings.

_Kokuyo Land._

His brother told him about a birthday party he had here once. About the petting zoo and the squirrel garden. About the carrousel and the white-painted elephant he'd ridden on over and over till he was sick from too much candy and too much spinning. He'd begged Mom to have his birthday party here last year, but she'd told him it had closed down a long time ago. They'd ended up having a party at the park instead. He'd had a pretty fun time, but there hadn't been a squirrel garden or a carrousel.

Why was he…?

Mukuro shook his borrowed head, rubbing irritably at the boy's forehead. He was reaching his limit. His control faltering as it became more and more difficult to stay present. Now that he had a solid mark in Namimori he'd be able to come back, but… he wanted to see this place for himself. He wasn't sure why exactly. Why he was so certain that this place would be what they needed, but he was.

It certainly didn't look like much from this vantage point. It hadn't looked like much in the pictures he'd seen online either. He'd been outside the prison in a body in Florence researching Namimori a few weeks ago and he'd happened upon the article in the online version of the city's newspaper.

-ooo-

**PLANS TO DEMOLISH KOKUYO LAND MEET WITH VOCAL OPPOSITION  
**  
_Plans to demolish the derelict amusement park in favor of a shopping complex have been met with stiff opposition both from the Kokuyo Historical Society as well as nature conservationists and many private citizens at a planning commission meeting held to discuss the proposed renovation yesterday afternoon…._

-ooo-

The photo with the little article blurb had been of the park when it was operational. There was a Ferris wheel of all the silly things and a Carousel barely visible behind a glistening glass dome. And there were trees, just a sea of trees, some in the background and some in the foreground and there were kids laughing and it looked….

It was stupid really. Like seeing a picture in a catalogue and dreaming of owning a perfect moment that could never belong to anyone, much less you, because it was a moment that didn't truly exist, but… it had looked like a nice place. It had looked like the kind of place where bad things just didn't happen. Even the more updated shot that had been posted with the main article that had showed the park as it stood, overgrown and abandoned and still been… appealing.

So, he'd made inquiries. Found out that the land was still privately owned though the city of Namimori had put in a bid for the land in the hopes of expanding because while Kokuyo Land itself was technically within the city boundaries of Kokuyo it was so close to the line that such a purchase would allow for a case to be made for redrawing the boundaries to suit allowing Namimori to bring in new businesses and even though much of the land was protected forest that couldn't be developed what _could_ be developed would more than pay for the initial land purchase. It was actually a really intelligent and well-considered move for all that it wasn't a particularly popular one with the citizens of either Namimori or Kokuyo.

Apparently the owner was quite eager to sell, had been trying to sell the land for years, but most buyers and developers wouldn't touch it because of all the protected forest that came with it and all the difficulties that went along with building and developing in such circumstances. It would seem that the town of Namimori was the first serious offer he'd even had on it.

It hadn't been difficult to find out what that offer had been either. Nor had it been particularly challenging to arrange for an informal safety inspection of the area.

It would be expensive, he'd checked before coming out here. Purchasing this place and setting up an account to fund the property taxes and utilities for the next few years would burn through most of what he'd managed to build up in terms of assets and savings, but….

He left Mi's bike propped outside, against the fence on that empty, abandoned strip of ill-kept road. Mi's tiny body made it easy enough to slip through a gap in the rusted fence, to squeeze beneath the chain that held the gate doors shut. Once inside he jogged up the overgrown path leading into the park.

He liked how far away it was from the city center, how far it seemed to be from everything even though it really wasn't. How quiet it was, almost desolate, the way the light shone on all the dusty windows of the buildings and how it felt like nature was trying to reclaim it. That it was so completely out of the way that even the most desperate and destitute people in this area hadn't seen fit to make a home here in this abandoned, forgotten place. The cars on the old Ferris wheel near the back of the property creaked and swayed gently in the wind. There was some trash and empty beer cans scattered in the corners next to the buildings, but not much in the grand scheme of things, as if it were too inconvenient for even delinquent kids to bother using it.

He stood in the middle of the path and listened to the wind rustle through the trees and he thought that this could work. That this place could be… that it could really _work_.

It wasn't perfect, of course, the electrical lines were still good, but the water lines in the area were shot, so they'd have to bathe down the street at the public bathhouse, which would bother the hell out of Chikusa and Ken would probably use it as an excuse to bathe even less often than usual, but they'd lived in far worse conditions over the years. Fortunately, the sewer lines were good so I long as they brought in water they could use the toilets and the sinks at least. And maybe, if this worked out, he could have the lines repaired. It wasn't out of the question. He knew Chikusa wouldn't complain, but it would be better if he could shower whenever he wanted in private in his own place.

He climbed to the top of one of the main buildings, through worn halls, over crumbling stairways, through an old theatre with moldy curtains and up onto the roof. Standing up there he could see for miles. A breeze stirred the short hair of this body and he closed his eyes enjoying the play of that breeze across his borrowed skin.

It wasn't perfect. It was broken and abandoned and probably dangerous, but that just made it the sort of place where they'd feel comfortable.

A place they could finally call home maybe.

Ten minutes later, Mitsuru blinked, mildly bewildered to find himself coasting downhill on his bike. It had been kind of cool looking at the old amusement park, but he was excited to be on his way home to play with Beats. His stomach growled irritably and though he was really glad he'd gotten that ball for Beats, he thought this would probably be the last time he'd skip lunch just to buy something for the puppy.

He was _starving_.

**-ooo-**

He blinked awake to find himself staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. There was a soft, steady beeping sound and it didn't take him long to realize this was the infirmary. That he was cuffed to an infirmary bed.

Huh.

He probably should have assumed they'd take him here when he didn't wake up for a few days. Of course, then again, they'd never seemed to give a damn when he was injured or concussed before so maybe it wasn't so strange to assume they wouldn't bother. Not that it mattered, really. Not that he cared. Maybe he'd care later after he'd gotten some sleep.

He thought vaguely about reaching out to Lancia to see how they were doing, but before the thought could even fully form he was already falling back into darkness and dream.

**-ooo-**

**NOTES:**

As always comments thrill me to no end, but are obviously not required. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Additional notes can be found over at the Archive of Own version of this chapter for the curious.

_Camping Outside Cacciatore - _In case you wondering where Ken &amp; Chikusa were during that year. Also, this is where all that stuff Mukuro was known to be stockpiling way back in Chapter One was going (though I'm sure y'all probably figured out this was the case already, but since I believe this is the first time it's been referenced directly that I'd go ahead and call it out).

_"That room upstairs" -_ If you read that and were mildly confused as to what room Mukuro is referring to, you're not alone. Mukuro did some exploring while Chikusa was showering and Ken was napping that day. What exactly he was doing has only been touched on very briefly once before and I wasn't terribly direct about it. It'll come up again.

_Lucia - _Her first language is not Italian which is why there is a disparity between how she thinks and how she speaks to Timoteo.


	9. The Good Son

**NOTES:**_  
_

_As this story is long as anything and it's been awhile, here are a cheat sheet of the noteworthy dates you'll need to remember for this chapter: __The last chapter left off on January 22, 2003. The date that Chikusa and Ken met Mukuro and between them they slaughtered every person in Esterneo they could lay hands on was June 9, 1996. So, pay close attention to the timeline headers as they appear to avoid confusion. If there is no header assume the events occur on the same day as the last and that all that has shifted is the viewpoint. The events seen in this chapter (and the next which will be up later this week as I had to split this chapter as it was enormous... well... more enormous) start on March 9, 2003 and will proceed to review the events of January 22-March 9, 2003 and then move forward from there with flashbacks popping in as necessary. This chapter jumps around a bit, but I do make an effort to keep the flashbacks in chronological order whenever possible._

**-ooo-**

_"__I've never once thought about how I was going to die," she said. "I can't think about it. I don't even know how I'm going to live." _  
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 110  
ESTERNEO  
TRADITORE  
March 9, 2003

**SALVATORE VINCIGUERRA**

He could hear footsteps in the hall. Heavy, measured, booted steps across the wooden floorboards of that long hall. He glanced around his tiny windowless room, his gaze finally settling on his bed. He could hide under it though he doubted it would fool him for long. He was clever after all, not that you really needed to be clever to note the lack of hiding places and make the logical assumptions about the few there were. He'd be found under the bed, found in the closet. There was no escape. Not that escape had ever really been an option for him anyway. No, confrontation was the only way forward. The only chance he had.

"He's here. He's almost here. What am I supposed to…? What am I supposed to do? I'm not ready. I don't think I'm ready," he whispered, worrying at a nail with his teeth as he stared at the closed bedroom door.

In a way, it was a relief. He'd been waiting for this day, hoping and fearing it for so long that it was almost a relief that it was finally here. His rage was like a blazing inferno, scorching anything and everything that dared stray into its path, he could practically hear the crackle of flames in the hallway beyond his door and it was terrifying, but… it still wasn't worse than the _anticipation_. However this turned out, at least he wouldn't need to be afraid anymore, he wouldn't be living this half-life in fear of the inevitability of this day. That was something. At least he wouldn't have to live every moment in terror of being discovered too soon, of being obliterated and who knew, who knew, maybe Father was wrong. Maybe he was stronger, maybe he was the one with the potential, the skill, the talent, the drive, maybe he was... _maybe_.

He scurried back onto his bed, sitting down nervously on the edge, his heart beating frantically in his chest. He forced himself to take a deep measured breath and let it out slowly. He could do this. He could do this. He wasn't weak like him. He wasn't reliant on others. He had only himself. Only himself to blame and to protect and it made him strong where he was weak. It made them different. Hadn't he proven to himself time and again that with a well-laid trap even a mouse could triumph over a lion? Not that he was a mouse, but the principle was sound enough.

And so what if he was angry? What did he care about his rage? So, what if that monster hated him? He wasn't the only one who was angry, the only one who could hate. He'd been cast aside, made to live a prisoner for years and for what? If it came down to a contest of emotions, he felt his resentment and hatred far outmatched those of the monster. If it didn't… well… that made things simpler, didn't it? He'd be more likely to make a mistake if… if he were angry.

The monster is at his door at last. He heard the footsteps slow and stop, decisively in front of it, could see the dark shadow of his feet blocking the hall's light. He stood there for a long time and he wondered if that monster was afraid, if they were frightened of each other. He thought so. Father didn't think so, but Father… Father didn't know everything, not when it came to _him_. Father knew precious little about _him_ even though he thought he did. Father thought he was a marvel. A wonder. Father didn't understand about monsters.

He wondered if the monster at his door recognized the door at which he stood as his. Had he ever seen it? He wasn't sure. He'd left Esterneo so soon after his messy, complicated birth that he might not have had the time to explore the house, after all. And even if he had, there was no telling whether he would have cared enough to remember it. Whether he would know what the initials carved above the handle meant or whether he would care even if he did?

Even before the monster opened the door he knew what he'd look like. He'd seen it before, in his nightmares and in the mirror and he knew his face well. Right down to the beautiful, bright and brilliant red right eye his father had given him as a special gift. The only difference was that for him that eye had never been anything more special than an eye, a well-preserved relic from the distant past, inert and useless to him. He could see through it, but nothing more. He'd been devastated when he couldn't use it when he woke up after the surgery.

That eye and his inability to use it had been the reason why his father had decided to move forward with the plan. To try to make him more compatible with the bullet, yes, but also in the hopes of reeling in that one soul, the soul of the world's most powerful illusionist, the man to whom this eye had once belonged.

_Daemon Spade._

But that too had been a failure.

He could still remember the feel of his father's hands wrapped tight around his throat as he died that first time.

As he died and each time he'd emerged from death choking and coughing and sobbing and feeling less like himself with each new cycle and each time he'd heard his father's firm, deep voice saying that word.

_Again_.

And then he was gone again back, into Hell, he presumed, though he didn't know. He didn't remember anything but darkness. Darkness and a vague feeling that he wasn't alone, that maybe he'd never been alone.

Again.

Again.

_Again_.

Then it was over and his throat was sore, so terribly sore though he wasn't certain if that was from the bruising grip that had strangled him or all the screaming in-between, but it was over and his father was smiling.

**-ooo-  
THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 2640  
ESTERNEO  
NORTHERN ITALY  
April 4, 1996

His father was pleased with him and it made something light and fluttery flicker to life in his chest, something new and hopeful. "Did I do well?" He had asked in a voice that was more like a croak. His eye and face and throat ached, but it wasn't so difficult to ignore those things for the moment.

"Yes, you did very well," Father replied, a rare smile on his lips and he thought he'd split his smile as he grinned up at him.

"Thank you, Father," he rasped, shivering. He glanced around the room, but the few nurses and doctors in the surgical suite were attending to their duties and very pointedly not looking at him, as if he bothered them, unsettled them. He shifted uncomfortably, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching him, looking at him, judging him.

It was creepy.

"Of course, there is much more that must happen now if we're to make use of your new skills, whatever they may be, but first I'd like to see if my initial hypothesis is correct."

One of the nurses stepped forward, nervous, and fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. "Sir, you should really let him recover fully before…."

"Nonsense, the world doesn't simply stop turning because we wish to take a nap, my dear," Father replied, smiling as he picked up a strange three-pronged sword from the table. "This is your weapon, my boy. This is how you will access your victims. It's made from a material similar to that of the possession bullet so you should be naturally attuned to the necessary frequency and the material naturally places aggressive proteins in the blood on contact that map out the body so that you will be able to find it anywhere on Earth was the host has been infected. Once you understand the composition of the bullet you should be able to replicate and produce real illusions that will perform the same basic function. All you need to do is break the skin."

Father reached out and dashed the sharp point across the cheek of the nurse who'd just spoken to him. "Just break their skin like so, it needs be nothing more than a prick or a scratch, it's enough that the skin is merely broken. Once that is done she should be able to possess her with no difficulty whatsoever and without the necessity of the bullet to propel your soul from one vessel to the next. Go ahead and attempt it now."

And he tried, he really did try, but he wasn't sure what he was really supposed to do or how it was supposed to feel. He tried to reach out mentally, but there was nothing there, nothing there except that unrelenting sense that he wasn't alone, that he was being watching, that something was wrong. He didn't really understand it. All he knew was that it made him feel a little sick. Maybe that was the nurse? Maybe he was sensing her? _Maybe_. "I'm… I'm not sure…" He began and his father scowled.

"It should be dreadfully simple, Salvatore. You should be able to flow right to her like water through a pipe. Hm. Perhaps the first time needs to be forced, a conduit opened if you will and pressure applied, and after that it will be an easier affair. Let's find out."

And that was when Father shot him.

He blinked and he was in the nurse's body, he felt sick or sicker and he could hear her thoughts, jumbled and hysterical and he panicked. He could feel how scared she was and everything felt wrong, wrong, _wrong_ and- even worse than that- there was that feeling, that horrifying feeling of not being alone, but this time it was worse. This time he could feel something moving inside him, slithering and shifting around him as if the move from one body to the next had dislodged or displeased it in some way. He screamed, only his scream came out in the nurse's voice and his –her- hands tore at her face and hair, pulling it out in tufts, nails ripping and breaking, tearing across the skin. It was inside them.

_Inside_ them.

They needed to get it out, out, out.

"Enough!" Father roared, vines erupting from the walls of the operating suite to drag them struggling back against the wall looping round and round their wrists, ankles and throats to hold them firmly in place. "I have had quite enough of this hysterical nonsense. You will control yourself, Salvatore."

But he was sobbing and he couldn't stop, he couldn't stop. "B-but F-F-Father th-there's… something _in here_ with me," he managed, shaking and trembling and strangely grateful for the shackles that prevented her body from falling to the floor in a miserable pile. He could still hear her screaming in the back of his head over and over again and then suddenly she was silent and he felt the terrible slithering thing settle at the back of his mind, it's presence not so frightening now that it had finally stopped moving about and she had finally shut up which was a nice bonus.

Father was looking at him with something like interest, "Oh?"

He was relieved, he'd thought… he'd thought maybe for a moment that Father might not believe him, which was silly. Why _wouldn't_ he? He'd never lied to Father and he wasn't lying now. "There's something there. I think it made me… _her_… stop screaming."

"Did it," Father murmured, scratching his chin. "Fascinating. Has it spoken to you?"

"Huh? Um… no? I-I don't think so, it's just… there." He tried to reach out, tentatively, to prod at it and he wasn't sure if it was sleeping or ignoring him, but he got no response. Not even a shiver of movement. "I think he's maybe sleeping now."

Father smiled, "He?"

Salvatore frowned. Why had he called it a _he_? He wasn't sure.

"Well then, I suppose we're going to have to find a way to wake him up. Shoo now, Salvatore, back to your own body, if you please."

Salvatore nodded and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing his mind back along the channel the possession bullet had created, back to his own brain and body. He opened his own eyes, blinking once and then twice because they ached a little though he wasn't sure why. He checked the presence and found it was still there, still sleeping or… whatever it was doing.

When he turned his attention back to the room he found Father crouched next to the body of the nurse. She was lying face up on the floor, staring up at the ceiling with wide, vacant eyes. She looked dead and he realized that was probably because she was. That was probably why she'd stopped screaming, why he hadn't felt anything from her after that.

"Clear this mess up," Father called to one of the others as he pushed himself to his feet. He turned his gaze back to Salvatore and he got the feeling that even though his father was looking right at him that he wasn't really looking at him at all. "Simply fascinating."

**-ooo-  
NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 110  
ESTERNEO  
TRADITORE  
March 9, 2003

He hadn't known then. Hadn't known that he would be… that all the power, the improved compatibility, the talent, _all of it_ belonged to _him_. That his Father had created a monster within him, something dark and powerful and, in the end, it had been too much for him to handle.

Mukuro Rokudou had been too much for him to handle.

He'd been so certain he could manage him at first. He'd been so utterly detached, so easy to drag to and fro, as he completed the tasks his father set for him. More lump than monster and he'd, perhaps, begun to think of him less as something separate and more as a strange adjunct being, a twin perhaps that hadn't detached properly so they were stuck sharing space in the same body and mind. He had been almost thankful that he'd seemed to have very little will or desire of his own. He'd even named him, privately because he was quite certain Father would find it unnecessary and silly. Mukuro Rokudou. It was a joke, a silly little private joke just for himself and his new... brother. He supposed that was a reasonable enough description though in truth he'd thought of him as something more like a pet at the time. 'Death' and 'Six Roads' because that was what he was, that was how he'd come into being.

Mukuro Rokudou.

And for a while everything had been great. Father had been pleased with their progress and he'd been pleased that Father was pleased. Mukuro wasn't much of a companion really, but sometimes he got the sense that he was listening. Not often, but sometimes. He tried talking about different things, exposing him to different emotions and ideas in the hopes that something would catch his interest, but the only time he stirred was when they were shunted into different bodies. He just didn't care. It was _incredibly_ frustrating. Of course, when the moment finally came that something did catch his interest it had been a completely different story. He had reared up within him and spread out to fill their whole body with his presence and Salvatore had found shoved him aside, locked away, abandoned, made a virtual prisoner in his own body.

And for what?

For _them_.

He'd been rejected by his own power, his own potential, by everything that should have been his because it, because _he_ liked _them_ better, _best_. Not because he wanted to have them for himself, to hoard their talents like a dragon might hoard gold. That he would have at least _understood_.

No, he'd wanted to _save them_, as if there was anything to even save them _from_ really. As if they all wouldn't be treasured and valued just the same, but Mukuro was greedy and covetous and terrible and selfish and he wanted everything for himself. His body. Those boys. They were supposed to be _family_ after all. They were both family and they were _lucky_ because they were special. Just like he was special, just like Mukuro was special. He'd heard his father talking about it and so he knew it was true.

The blond one (Ken Joshima, he reminded himself, because it was important that he remember their names because they were still family and important even if he despised them now) was the grandson of the second Esterneo Boss. Born to an enforcer who his father had called the Beast of Graz. The other one, Chikusa Kakimoto, was the son of an assassin called the White Glove. He'd never met the Beast of Graz and the second Esterneo Boss had died long before he was born, but his father had taken him to meet the White Glove once.

It had been a few years before the mafia had begun their campaign of unlawful persecution against them for being better and more daring than all the rest. He had been very small, probably no more than four, but he remembered it well enough. He had an excellent memory, an important skill for an illusionist, his father had told him time and again. He remembered that the trip had taken a long time and he'd slept most of the way curled up in the backseat of Father's car under a blanket. The house, when they arrived, had been plain and had a large workshop attached and the woman who answered the door, who he assumed was the White Glove seemed tiny standing beside his father as she greeted them before asking his father in for tea. They had talked about _progress_ and her _retirement_ and the _good of the family_ though much of the conversation had been spoken in Japanese so he'd only understood some very little bit of it then, his Japanese had not been particularly great at the time.

He only remembered that much of the conversation because he always remembered the important things Father said and those words had seemed important. Just like he remembered when his father told him that they were all meant to be _great_. That Chikusa Kakimoto and Ken Joshima were _pinnacles of progress_. That they were to be the future of their family just like him and he'd tried to explain that to Mukuro, in those days and weeks before he'd given Mukuro his name. When he'd just been a silent, sluggish presence in the back of his mind and afterwards when he'd started feeling the first bursts of emotion from him as if they were his own.

He'd tried again and again to explain it to him whenever he felt Mukuro's rage flare, momentary and startling bright, when Father was using the Possession bullet to force them from one body to another to test their compatibility with the bullet. Or when Father asked him to direct his focus to possessing particular targets using the nurses and doctors who had been overseeing the various operations to increase his ability to do so with minimal impact under pressure or to the children who underwent those operations to test his reaction to pain stimuli during possessions.

Father had marked person after person as a method by which to stimulate _him_, to wake him up, that presence inside him that seemed only to want to be left alone. And it had always worked, to a degree, while they were in other bodies. The presence that would eventually become Mukuro Rokudou always seemed more alert, more aware when they were outside his body, but afterwards- when they were both in their own body- he had always retired immediately to the back of Salvatore's mind and gone back to ignoring him, ignoring everything it seemed.

He just never seemed interested in listening to him. He tried to tell him again and again, to explain to him about _family_ and _pride_ and _sacrifice_ and Mukuro Rokudou hadn't _cared_. He hadn't cared about all they had suffered at the hands of the mafia. He hadn't cared about _power_ or _necessity_. He hadn't cared about any of that at all. He hadn't thought he actually cared about anything at all until the day Mukuro roared to life within him, a thousand points of light and rage and hate that ripped him apart from the inside, tearing him free of his body and shoving him down into the dark.

The day that Mukuro took his body from him and used it to destroy his dream, Father's dream, their Famiglia's dream. Just ripped it to pieces and tossed it all away as if it was _nothing_. As if it meant _less_ than nothing to him. As if their _family_ was _nothing_ he needed or wanted or valued. Only them. He only cared about them. Those two that _should_ have been the future of their Famiglia, but had instead been only too willing to join in on its destruction the moment the opportunity arose.

This wasn't how things were meant to be. He wasn't meant to be some faded reminder of all that could have been. He was meant to be great. He was meant to be his family's salvation. He was meant to be their hope, the light that would lead them into the future and instead his body had become the instrument of their destruction. With those ungrateful wretches at his side, his companions and accomplices as they murdered every bit of the family they could lay their hands on. He was meant to be their salvation and instead he had become a hostage, a victim, a silent presence held captive within the monster they had unwittingly created.

But nothing, _nothing_ Mukuro had done had held a candle to what they had done.

Those ungrateful, backstabbing little _bastards_.

Mukuro he could almost understand, because Mukuro Rokudou was a monster, an unintended defect, a _mistake_, but those two- Chikusa Kakimoto and Ken Joshima- they were just _traitors_.

And traitors deserved what they got.

**-ooo-  
THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 156  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 22, 2003

**CHIKUSA**

Ken vomited all over the floor of their cell when they came back from the shower room that morning.

He was glad he'd taken her advice and talked to Ken the night before. He'd woken up in the morning to the feel of Ken flopped all over him, snoring in his ear, his shoulder a little damp with drool and though the dry heat of Ken's skin still scared him and the damp was uncomfortable, he'd still felt… better than he'd felt all week. It was just luck that the guard that unlocked their cell hadn't bothered to do more than glance inside before moving on so he hadn't noticed there were two of them in the bottom bunk when there should only have been one.

He should have moved back to his own bunk, he'd meant to, but in the end he hadn't. In the end he'd just lain there beneath him, running his fingers through Ken's short hair, adjusting to the feel of it, still so strange and new. He'd heard the sound of the guard walking down the line, but he'd stayed anyway because Ken had asked him to. He probably hadn't meant for him to stay all night, but he was glad he had, glad and relieved that Ken was sleeping deeply enough to snore. It was the first time in a while, too long, and so he'd lain there silently until Ken had snorted awake, startled by the sound of the guard's key in the lock, and looked down at him with the strangest mixture of panic and relief.

He wasn't sure he would have even minded being punished if the guard had caught them out in that moment, because Ken had smiled, bright and careless in a way he hadn't in weeks and pulled the blanket up over them. It felt strange and thrilling and dangerous and his heart galloped in his chest because there was something about being this close in the dark that reminded him of the tent outside Cacciatore all those years ago. Only he'd never felt like this back then, never been this aware of the weight of him then.

"You're heavy," he murmured, pressing unsteady hands against Ken's sides, sliding across warm skin where his t-shirt had ridden up.

"Yeah?" Ken replied, burying his fingers in Chikusa's hair, finding the scars there easily even in the dark and tracing along the lines. "You want me to move?"

He did… and he didn't. He didn't know what he wanted. He never knew what he wanted. He swallowed hard, suddenly unaccountably nervous in the darkness. The winter blankets were thick, no doubt on account of the perpetually broken heating system, so with it drawn over them and tucked close he couldn't see anything at all besides the quality of the darkness. But he could hear and feel the rasp of Ken's breath against his lips, too close and not close enough, feel the subtle burn of his feverish skin.

"Your breath stinks," he whispered, hoping to break the tension that felt as if it might shatter him to pieces at any moment.

"Yeah, so does yours, Kappa," Ken replied, nudging his nose against Chikusa's cheek, his lips pressing light across the line of his jaw as he spoke. "Thanks for staying with me last night."

Chikusa licked his lips, quick and nervous, "Yeah."

"Are you guys completely mental?" M.M. hissed from somewhere outside the blanket and Ken yelped and jerked to the side as she smacked some part of him hard enough for the sound to echo in their large room even with the blanket to deaden the impact. "Or are you both just too stupid to live? Get _out_ of that bed before someone notices. Jesus. I'm glad you guys decided to make up, but come _on_. You're lucky that idiot wasn't paying attention. Do you _want_ to take a trip to the Box?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Ken grumbled, tossing the blanket aside and sitting back, either not realizing or not caring that he was still pinning Chikusa quite handily to the bed by virtue of sitting on his stomach and being too heavy to easily move from that particular angle. He could do it, but there was a 16.18, no, 16.19 percent chance that he'd injure one of them, probably Ken, whose ability to heal was obviously already compromised. "That toffee-eating jackass is halfway down the line, we've got a few minutes."

M.M. crossed her arms over her chest and hiked a disbelieving eyebrow at them, tapping her foot impatiently. "More like you've got about thirty seconds since you've apparently forgotten he isn't the only guard on the line or the one who actually escorts us to the showers, Super Sniffer."

"Ah, fuck," Ken complained, rolling over to the wall to allow Chikusa to scoot out from beneath him and off the bed. The floor was cold against his bare feet. He must have taken his socks off in the night. He'd been wearing them when he climbed into Ken's bed, he was almost certain, but they were gone now and there wasn't time to find them. He stood quickly, tugging at the blankets of his bed, ignoring the little piece of paper he saw nestled against his pillow as he settled the blankets into their proper place as the other guard rapped on the bars.

"Hurry up or you brats are showering with the big kids today," the guard (S. Rossi according to his name badge, he had a smear of peanut butter on his collar which was relatively fresh, his heart rate was elevated 0.8789 above what was average for a man of his age and size and he walked with a slight limp because his pelvis was 0.005mm out of alignment) called as Chikusa snagged his glasses from his bedpost and settled them on his nose, breathing a sigh of relief as the world settled into a more comfortable blur, the numbers and trajectories vanishing for the moment.

He tucked the paper beneath his pillow without bothering to glance at whatever message was written there. He didn't want to care about that. Not now. Not when he was still warm, when his shirt was still a little damp with drool though that part was obviously gross and not the least bit endearing. That paper was a problem for later.

"Come on, Kappa, hurry up," Ken stood, bracing a hand against the rail, but Chikusa had already noticed how unsteady he was. The way he wavered and his eyes fluttered closed and then open again, his head nodding forward.

"Let me grab our things," he murmured, grateful when Ken just nodded and let him. He snagged his and Ken's clothes and the basket with the shampoo and soap and returned, setting a hand against Ken's back. "Okay?"

"Okay," Ken nodded and they went to the showers.

He'd seemed… better while they were in the shower, not well, still burning with fever, the skin around his eyes still bruised and hollow, still unsteady, but a little more relaxed. He'd rested his forehead against Chikusa's collarbone while Chikusa had scrubbed shampoo into his short, bristly hair and murmured that the headache was starting to lessen a bit.

"Now it only feels like the very tiny miners are using pickaxes on it rather than jackhammers," Ken joked, leaning back against the wall just out of reach of the shower's spray as Chikusa stepped back to wash his own hair. "Have I mentioned how much I enjoy watching you shower?"

Chikusa frowned, flicking water at him, "You're still not funny."

Ken had grinned and Chikusa had closed his eyes in retaliation though that smile followed him into the dark, warming him despite the chill of the water.

They'd returned to the cell and Ken had been beside him laughing at something she had said, steady enough to walk on his own though Chikusa had insisted on carrying the dirty clothes and shower things just in case Ken felt dizzy again and needed to grab one of them. Ken had insisted he was being overdramatic, but he'd agreed readily enough. In the end it hadn't really mattered since everything had all ended up scattered across the floor anyway when Ken had taken all of three steps into the cell, tripped forward like someone had shoved him from behind- an impossibility- and vomited before he even hit the floor.

Chikusa had dropped everything he was holding and managed to catch him, not quickly enough to stop the fall, but fast enough to soften the landing so he ended up pressed against Ken's back with one arm caught around his chest while he wretched, gagging and heaving spit and bile across the stained concrete surrounded by their bath things and scattered clothing.

"Jesus," he heard M.M. murmur as the choking, violent shudders just seemed to escalate and one of Ken's hands slapped weakly against his arm as he pinched his nose shut with the other. He hauled Ken up off the floor and half-dragged him to his feet, stumbling with him out of the cell towards the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later they sat together on the floor of one of the filthy bathroom stalls, Ken's head lulling against an arm that was looped over and around the toilet seat, the door firmly closed and their legs overlapping in the too-small space. His nails, blunt though they were without the cartridge in, had still torn thin ragged, bloody rivets in nose where he'd gripped it too tightly. Just seeing those tiny crescent-shaped marks made Chikusa feel like he might be sick as well. Normally they'd have healed up almost immediately, but it had been ten minutes and fifteen seconds since he'd first seen them and they were still sluggishly weeping blood. If Ken noticed, he didn't care. "Thanks for getting me out of there it was… something in our cell fucking _reeks_," he murmured, his voice hoarse and guttural, as he turned his bloodshot gaze on Chikusa. "I've been smelling the same thing for, I don't know, weeks I guess, but I thought it was… I don't know, what the fuck I thought. That it was just… just some-" he interrupted himself with a hiccuping, gagging sob and turned his face back into the toilet. "Dammit," he panted after another minute of heaving into the bowl, the smell of acid sharp and vile in the poorly ventilated stall. He reached up blindly and flushed the toilet again. "Is this what regular fucking people feel like all the time? This fucking _sucks_."

Chikusa shrugged helplessly though Ken wasn't looking at him and couldn't see it. Lancia had the flu once in New York, but it hadn't been like this. He'd mostly just had a fever and spent a couple days home from work sleeping on the couch, his long legs dangling over the wobbly arm while they'd brought him water and the fizzy ginger soda and made him eat soup from the Thai place down the road and the nasty crackers that tasted like well-salted Styrofoam. None of that experience was useful here. None of them had ever been sick like this except Mukuro when they'd been on the ship and even that hadn't been like this.

"Sometimes, maybe," he answered finally and Ken nodded, eyes closed as he turned his head back against his arm.

"Yeah, I guess so," Ken murmured, sitting up unsteadily and pressing his hands against his face. "I thought it was just cleaner or that someone down the line had really nasty fucking gas or something, I don't know. I just… I thought it was just something else I needed to just deal with, I guess. It wasn't like this when we left to shower. It's like someone came by while we were gone and fucking soaked some of our stuff in it or something. It's completely fucking awful, like rancid ass baked in a dead rat buried in a compost heap." He gagged again lunging forward as he dry heaved over the bowl, his fingers a desperate, pained white and red where they gripped the edges of the toilet lid.

Chikusa frowned, fingers restless where they gripped Ken's ankle, stroking around the knots of bone, the tiny scars there, unsure what else to do. "I didn't smell anything strange at all."

"Yeah, I figured," Ken sighed, as he spat into the toilet and flushed it again, turning his face back to towards him again. "This kind of all seemed like it was pretty much exclusively for my fucking benefit."

"What can I do?"

He laughed, soft and bitter, "I don't _know_. I just- I can't go back in there. I _can't_, Chikusa. I'll fucking lose it. I'll tear my nose off trying to get away from it."

"Sorry," Chikusa murmured, guilt choking anything else he might have added. He should have killed Birds days ago when he'd realized he was the source of the problem. He wasn't even sure why he hadn't. Except… except… it had been so easy to latch on to the idea that Ken was being harassed because of him. To decide the simplest way to stop it was just to put some space between, to just… step away. And it had been the wrong thing, a bad decision. He'd hurt Ken and it hadn't stopped anything at all. Ken was sick and it was his fault because he'd made it worse in every single way by not just dealing with it.

He was a coward and a liar and a terrible friend and he didn't deserve him.

He never had.

Ken sighed, flushing the toilet yet again before dragging himself slowly, painfully, the short distance between them to curl up against the stall door beside him, squeezing into the tight space, pressing tight against his side.

"Not your fucking fault," Ken commented tiredly and he wondered if Ken really believed that whether he would hate him if he knew, if he told him the whole truth of it. "They're gonna chuck me in the Box, aren't they?"

"Probably," Chikusa whispered, because that's what they did when you refused to do what they said, when you disobeyed. They'd seen it with other people, it was part of the reason they hadn't done anything they could be called out on while Mukuro wasn't around to fix it if something went wrong. But now… Ken couldn't go back in the cell and they'd never be able to convince anyone that they weren't lying about why. There was no one around to help, to fix it, just the two of them, well, the three of them, if he counted the girl. He could try and remove the source of the smell, but… it probably wouldn't work. The trap had been laid too well for that. Ken could smell it, but it was so strong it made him sick. Or, more likely, they'd finally reached some crucial tipping point and it would take virtually nothing to make him worse now, to make him sick and sicker still. Either way he couldn't go near it and they couldn't smell it, couldn't find it, couldn't get rid of it and if they did the only way to prevent it happening again was to kill the source of the problem. But there were no guarantees that would stop it, that that would actually help, but at least if he did that then he'd be the one locked in the Box. It wouldn't make up for what his inaction had wrought, but maybe….

"Don't even fucking think about, Kappa," Ken growled half-heartedly. "If anyone is going to gut that fucker and get stuck with the consequences it's gonna be me. Mind your own fucking business."

"You are my business," Chikusa replied, his gaze trained on the numbers and letters scrawled across the stall wall, scratched into the paint, dozens of pointless little messages from no one to nobody.

"Yeah?" Ken laughed, turning his face against Chikusa's shoulder. "That's nice to hear, but I still don't want you getting locked up for me."

"Sometimes I think we're being punished," Chikusa murmured, not quite sure why he'd said it out loud. He tried to keep those sorts of thoughts to himself.

Ken shrugged, sighing and leaning more heavily against Chikusa's shoulder, it was beginning to ache a bit from the weight, "For surviving?"

"That's not all we've done."

Ken snorted, "I guess not. You really still believe all that shit?"

"No. Sometimes, I don't know," Chikusa murmured, tracing fingers across the back of Ken's hand before threading their fingers together. "Don't remember much about it."

"Why are we fucking talking about this now? You only talk about this shit when you're… you scared, Kappa?"

"I'm not," he lied, because he didn't want to get into this now. Maybe never.

"You are. You have been for weeks. I figured you'd tell me sooner or later, you always do, but… I think we're outta-"

"Don't wanna lose you," Chikusa said the words in a rush, cutting him off and shoving the sentiment out before he has a chance to overthink it. Before he can get so lost in the possible consequences that he can't say them at all.

Ken blew out a breath and sat up enough to punch him in the shoulder with his free hand before settling back in against his side. "You're so fucking stupid, Kappa. You're never gonna lose me. And even if I _did_ die or something, I'd just come back and haunt you assholes until you died and we could all be pissed off ghosts killing mafia shitheads together forever or whatever."

"Ken…" That wasn't what he'd meant, not really, but he isn't sure how to put what he really meant into words.

"Yeah?"

"Tell me what to do?"

Ken laughed and it almost sounded like a sob, "Why the fuck would I want to do that? You never listen to me anyway. Just… be careful, okay? I don't mind if it's me, but I'd fucking lose my shit if anything happened to you."

"Is he dead in there? Are you both? Or are you sucking cock? Because if you're not dead, you need to hurry it up and get the heck back out here already. It looks like they're finally bringing your buddy in," M.M.'s voice calls from the door and he feels the burn of her words in his cheeks. He really, really hates her so very much that it takes a minute before he's able to process her words.

Ken is quicker on the uptake, his fingers tightening on Chikusa's as he perks up, "Lancia? They're finally bringing Lancia in?"

"Big, tall, lanky bastard? More scars on his chest than skin? Hair like he got a finger stuck in a light-socket? And, really, what the hell is it with you boys and the facial tattoos? And he _really_ looks like he's about to start knocking fucking heads together if he doesn't find what he's looking for which I'm willing to bet money that's you two. So if you don't want to start a riot, you need to get a move on."

The grin that broke over Ken's face made the tight feeling in Chikusa's chest ease even as the queasiness of the inevitability of Ken's leaving deepened. It wasn't that he wasn't glad that Lancia was back, but Lancia wouldn't be able to fix this. He was certain of that. They needed Mukuro. Mukuro would have been able to fix it, to stop it, to tell them what to do.

**-ooo-  
LANCIA**

He could practically feel the vultures circling as the guards escorted him onto the block. Hundreds of eyes assessing him, sizing him up, trying to determine who the hell he was and where he was gonna fall in the block pecking order. He felt gross as fuck as one of the most noteworthy things about spending time in the Box was that they didn't take you out to do any fucking thing apparently until you had done your time and that included showering. So, he felt like hell, everything itched and he just wanted a damn nap and a shower, but what he _needed_ was to see them. To see for himself that they were alive, that they were okay. Panic and tension made his heart race, but he forced his posture to stay loose, relaxed as he scanned the room with narrowed eyes for a hint of Ken's violently blond hair.

Nothing.

No Ken, no Chikusa. Just a bunch of mafia fuckheads he couldn't care less about as far as the eye could see.

_Shit_.

Where the _fuck_ were they?

He glared down at the guard who had escorted him in who was still in the process of unlocking the shackles around his ankles and wrists with quavering hands. "Hey, you. Where the _fuck_ are my kids?"

The guard blinked up at him, surprised, his fingers still going through the motions of unlocking the ankle cuffs on autopilot. "Huh?"

"That wasn't meant to be a fucking stumper. Unless you've got a whole flock of minors running around here in which case I'm sorry I wasn't more fucking specific in the first place. What I'm asking you is: where the hell are Chikusa Kakimoto and Ken Joshima? The tall, lanky kid who wears glasses and never fucking talks and the short, blond kid who never shuts the fuck up. You can't fucking miss them. Now where the hell are they?" He growled, his hands clenching into fists as the guard unlocked the last set of cuffs, the entire affair clanking loudly as it fell between them.

"Um, I don't, um," the guard stuttered looking like he'd rather be cleaning toilets with his tongue in Cambodia than kneeling at his feet surrounded by the chains he'd just taken off him.

"Lancia!"

He turned at the sound of that voice and Ken hit him hard enough to send him stumbling backwards and almost flat on his ass because that asshole guard still hadn't managed to stand up and get the fuck out of the way. The hit made his still healing wounds ache, but he laughed anyway, wrapping his arms tight around the little blond talking too fucking fast directly into his chest. He couldn't understand a word he was saying, but for the moment he didn't care. He lifted him easily up out of the way so the guard could finish his job of gathering up the chains and go the fuck away already. "Hey kid, I think you actually got fucking shorter while I was gone," he commented, grinning broadly. He glanced in the direction Ken had come from and found Chikusa hovering there, silent and wary.

He looked like _hell_. Cap pulled low on his forehead and dark circles half-hidden by his glasses, but still perfectly fucking obvious to anyone with eyes. He was pale and he looked exhausted and worried which, for Chikusa, was the equivalent of running around a room screaming with his hair on fire when it came to fucking emoting. Kid just wasn't much for expressing himself.

He glanced down at Ken's head where it was still buried against his chest and it suddenly occurred to him that this was the first time he'd actually hugged him, having only ever actually joked about it before. And now that he was thinking about it, and not just being excited that they weren't fucking dead or something, it was kind of fucking weird… and really kind of fucking awkward as well. Weirder still, Ken hadn't even cussed at him at all for making fun of his height which usually would have been the first thing he'd done. His stomach sank as he realized part of the reason he hadn't been able to easily pick them out of a crowd might have been that Ken's crazy fucking hair was all but gone. He placed an unsteady hand against the hair that was now clipped neat and close to his head, dread swirling in his stomach.

_Shit._

Chikusa didn't cut Ken's hair if he didn't have to, never had, and he was pretty sure that was equal parts Ken being fucking awful about holding still for anything, ever, so cutting his hair was a little like trying to trim a hedge with a jackhammer and because Chikusa liked change about as much as Ken liked showers and Mukuro liked people. So, whatever the fuck this was, it wasn't a style choice. Hell, it probably wasn't even voluntary.

He glanced back up to find Chikusa still lingering a few steps away from them, fidgeting almost, like he was unsure of his welcome, but that was nothing new. Chikusa had always been like that, even as a little kid. He'd seen it often enough in the way he stood apart from even Ken and Mukuro sometimes. The way he was sometimes even more awkward than Mukuro at handling Ken's exuberance. He was close, but not so close as to impose, not so close that anyone would think he wanted to be comforted, to be held, so no one would think that he was _asking_.

_Fuck it._

If he was going to be awkward and uncomfortable while enduring Ken's sudden impulsive need for affection, he sure as hell was going to be alone in it, so if Chikusa _really_ didn't want to be hugged, the little fucker could damn well _dodge_. He took one arm from around Ken and snagged the kid's arm, pulling Chikusa in tight against Ken's back so that Ken was sandwiched between them, his arms loosely around them both. He felt a shiver run up Chikusa's back and smiled when he just sighed in resignation and rested his cheek against Ken's head. The kid had gotten taller again. It was hard to tell sometimes, the way Chikusa slouched his shoulders as if he could make himself smaller and less obvious by willing it so, but he'd always towered over the other two. He didn't know what the fuck had happened, but it had to have been pretty damn bad if seeking comfort from him seemed like a good alternative. He might care about them, might even love them in his own way, but he was pretty sure they'd always viewed him as little more than a waystation; just a safe place to stay for a while on their way to something else. Still…

"I might have even missed you little bastards," he murmured, pitching his voice low enough that only they would hear.

He glanced up at all the assholes that were still loitering around staring at them like they expected them to do fucking tricks or something. "Show's over, dickheads. Mind your own fucking business or I'll beat the hell out of each and every one of you," he snarled and the nice thing about every one thinking you were some sort of crazy Famiglia-slaughtering asshole was, apparently, that people were quick to assume that you didn't make idle threats. No sooner had the words left his mouth than all the assholes gathered around them suddenly all seemed to have urgent business to attend elsewhere.

"I'm sorry," he breathed finally, turning his attention back to the boys. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."

"You stink," Ken grumbled in answer, face still pressed against Lancia's chest though he'd turned to the side so he could be more easily heard at least. "Where the fuck have you been? Mukuro said you were supposed to be back last week. You get lost down a sewer?"

"Close. Some shitheel conned his way into the infirmary to take a swipe at me so I killed the fucker and they tossed me in the Box for my trouble. Went down practically the fucking second Mukuro left to do whatever the fuck he's doing. You heard from him?"

"No," Chikusa whispered, sounding spooked.

"I'm sure he's fine. Slippery little fucker like Mukuro, he's probably still off doing whatever crazy shit he was doing and he's going to be all sorts of pissed off that he was out of the loop when he finally shows back up. So what's going on with you two? You look like hell. And why does that girl keep staring at us like we're some sort of really fascinating fucking social experiment?"

"That's M.M., she's great," Ken mumbled and Lancia was pretty sure he must have misheard.

"M&amp;M? Like the fucking candy?"

"Not like the candy, smartass," the girl frowned, shelving the unsettled look she'd been giving them in favor of a look that could only be described as pissy. "It's M.M. and it stands for-"

Lancia snorted, cutting her off, "I don't even care, kid. Just know that I'm not calling you that, because it sounds fucking ridiculous. How you can say that out loud with a straight face, I have no damn idea. So, I can either call you 'M' like the Bond character or 'Candy'. Since Ken thinks you're great, I'll even let you pick."

She rolled her eyes, but he could see the edge of a smile tugging at her lips, "Bond."

"The only reasonable choice," Lancia chuckled, squeezing Chikusa and Ken a little tighter before releasing them. "Now that we've gotten the important shit out of the way, how about one of you fills me in on what I missed and which asses need kicking so I can get started? I've got a feeling it's going to be a busy fucking day."

**-ooo-**

Ken laughed roughly, the sound slightly muffled because he was holding his hands over his face and sitting so close to Chikusa he was surprised he hadn't just plopped down on his lap. "They're going to toss me in the Box."

Lancia snorted, pausing his current task of shoveling overcooked eggs in his mouth to reply it that piece of total fucking nonsense. "No, they're really _not_. Of course, I'm probably gonna get tossed back in the Box once I trash your fucking cell, but you'll be in the clear. You said the only unoccupied cell is up on the second level all the way at the other end of the row, right?"

He glanced up at the girl, M, and found her nodding and watching him with what he could only assume was morbid fascination. He had a feeling that at some point she was going to ask him all sorts of uncomfortable fucking questions. She just had that look to her, like she was dying to know the answer to something.

And if he'd needed an upside for going back in the damn box besides just saving Ken from a trip there, not having to answer that girl's awkward fucking questions certainly fit the bill.

"Okay, good enough. Trust me, you wouldn't do well locked in that itty, bitty room, kid, so let's just try to avoid that if we can, all right? Are you absolutely sure it's this Birds guy who's doing all this shit? Won't do you a hell of a lot of good if I take one for the team and he just fucks up your next cell the exact same way."

"Oh, it's absolutely him," M replied, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. "Just look at that smug bastard."

The smug bastard in question did look fucking smug and what was more he was very obviously creeping on their table. He met the man's gaze briefly and something like rage flipped in his stomach when the man smiled at him and tipped his head in acknowledgment. He grit his teeth and turned back to Ken who was looking a little green around the edges. "You okay, kid?"

"I think I need to-" Ken made a gagging sound as he stumbled to his feet. Chikusa was already up beside him, leading him hurriedly away from the table and back towards what could only assume was probably the bathroom.

Lancia set his fork down and rubbed a hand over his face as he watched them go. "Yeah, you really chose a wonderful fucking time to go on holiday, you little prick," he grumbled under his breath.

"To whom are you speaking?"

"No one who's here to appreciate it," Lancia sighed, rubbing his eyes irritably. "Alright, so tell me what stupid shit they've been doing."

"I don't-"

"Don't give me that nonsense. You've lived with them for a couple months, so you should know what's normal and what isn't. I lived with them for _years_; I know whatever is happening it isn't all just because Ken is sick. What's going on?"

"I'll tell you what, big man. I don't do anything for free, but since you're new and Ken thinks you're great, I'll go ahead and give you the friends and family discount. You answer a question for me and I'll answer one for you. How does that sound?"

Lancia snorted, a thin, tight smile curving his lips, "I should have fucking expected that anyone who got along with them would be a little bit too mercenary to be hanging around for the sake of friendship and good will. Mukuro sure knows how to fucking pick them."

"You think he picked me? Ken's a pussycat, but he's got a big damn mouth which meant your boss either needed to kill me or pay me to keep my mouth shut."

He couldn't help laughing at that and at the little frown she gave him when he did. "Honey, if you think those are the only options available than you don't know anything about them at all. Mukuro absolutely picked you out for a reason, but clearly it wasn't your exceptional observational skills."

"Great, so do we have a deal or what?" M replied sourly, "Tick tock, tough guy, I don't think Ken's going to be in there being sick forever."

"Fine. You want to ask me some fucking questions, go right ahead and ask."

"Why did you kill them? Your family?"

"Huh. Not even gonna lob in a softball to throw me off first, huh? You really just get right down to it for the get go."

"That's not an answer."

"Alright, sure, you want an answer it's because they didn't know me well enough to stop me before I could."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Kid, you asked me a question and I answered it honestly, you want to know something more about it than you're gonna need to ask something else when it's your turn. Now tell me what happened to them? They're acting fucking weird."

"I'm afraid you're going to need to be more specific."

"It's gonna be like that, huh?"

"Looks like it."

"Fine. That guy been doing anything to Chikusa?"

"Yup, Slim there started getting creepy little notes about a week ago, before Ken got his little haircut, and a bird continues to drop them off a new one for him every morning. I pulled this one off his bed this morning," she slipped a little scrap of paper from her pocket and slid it across the table to him. "Why leave your family to work for them?"

"My family was dead and I didn't have any better options on the table. Now give me that fucking paper," Lancia glanced down at it once she finally handed it over, read it once and again and then proceeded to tear it into tiny pieces before getting up and sprinkling the pieces into the trash can.

"Well, he's got lousy fucking penmanship," he commented as he arrived back at the table. "You'd think if he was gonna go through all the trouble of sending him a bunch of gross little notes or whatever the fuck they were supposed to be that he'd spend a minute on it." Lancia glanced in the direction of the bathroom to be sure the boys weren't on their way back yet. "Chikusa didn't see that, I take it?"

"No, I don't think so. He slept in Ken's bed last night and had to get ready in a hurry this morning and when we came back from the showers Ken tossed his cookies all over the cell the second we came in so Chikusa has been with him since. Why?"

Lancia nodded, "Because if he had Birds would be dead and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"What because of that note?" M replied, obviously confused. "It just says 'Sorry I missed you in New York', I've seen a fair few of these and that's the least disgusting one so far. What happened in New York?"

"Don't worry about it. The point is I need you to be absolutely fucking sure that this is him."

"I'm sure. It's definitely him."

"And Ken doesn't know about these notes?"

"Sorry, you're going to need to answer my question first. What happened in New York?"

"Lots of things."

"I'm sure, they mentioned they were there for about nine months that's plenty of time for things to happen. But you made it sound like there was something specific."

Lancia growled irritably, "Someone ambushed us and tried to kill Chikusa the last day we were there. I assume this was referring to that."

"Ken doesn't know. Chikusa refused to tell him about them. I told him he should, but he wouldn't. I think he thought Ken would take a run at Birds if he did."

"Yeah, well, that's fucking true enough," Lancia sighed, there wasn't a doubt in his fucking mind that was at least a large part of why Chikusa hadn't been falling all over himself to show those notes to Ken. He'd seen first hand several times what Ken did to people that really pissed him off and it was messy and loud. He's sure Birds would have met a similar end.

Mukuro hadn't let them pick up a lot of jobs while they'd been in India, but there had been exceptions. After all, they'd all been doing this shit for too damn long to go cold turkey and the boys got downright twitchy when they went too long without knocking someone's teeth down the back of their throat. They'd gone about six months when they'd been in prison the first time and they'd barely made it to New York without killing some random sailor for looking at them funny.

So, they'd taken odd jobs here and there, even setting aside Vongola, there had been a few small mafia families scattered in and around Mumbai and Mukuro had cherry-picked the worst of the worst and scrawled the details on notebook paper he shoved through a crack in the door on his more reclusive days or passed out at dinner when he was feeling more like impersonating a human being. He always insisted that Lancia go with them whenever the job only required one or the other and he'd never minded going along even if it was, more often than not, just to hang around and drive the getaway car. Mukuro, for all his faults, did at least try to keep them safe. He didn't always get it right, but Lancia never doubted that he tried.

He'd gone out with Ken on one of those jobs not long after they'd arrived in Mumbai. Neither Ken nor Mukuro had told him the details of the job, but Ken had practically been vibrating with excitement the whole drive over. When Ken had asked Chikusa if he wanted to come, Chikusa had muttered something about the bloodstains being too much trouble and wanting a shower and shooed them out the door.

He'd ended up leaning against the wall in the hallway outside the target's apartment to wait while Ken went inside to take care of the job. He'd probably been obvious as fuck, but it was the sort of neighborhood where people kept their heads down and minded their own. As evidenced by the lack of cops or even curious faces peering out curtains or cracked doors when the man in the apartment started yelling for help, high-pitched and terrified. The only obvious reaction to the racket was that someone in one of the adjacent apartments felt the sudden need to listen to their radio at full volume. Still, with all the screaming, he figured it would probably be better if the few people who had been around before and after remembered him rather than the little blond teenage boy who was doing the actual killing. The dark-haired thug was much less of a standout look, even in Mumbai, especially when he wore a hoodie that hid the tattoo on his face from obvious view.

Ken had come back outside twenty minutes later singing some pop song under his breath and wearing too large dress shoes that concealed socks that were so soaked with blood they squelched with each step he took. He had his own shoes is plastic sack and had laughed about forgetting to take them off before he got started and not having brought extra socks. He'd read in the newspaper a couple days later that the man had been ripped apart by an animal, that they hadn't even been able to find all the pieces. There had been a few anonymous statements in the days afterwards about screaming and running and laughter. There had been rumors about the fucking werewolves of Mumbai or some shit for weeks afterwards.

Ken didn't really do subtle and his rage was not kind.

"The only thing that really surprises me," Lancia commented finally, shaking off memories of those warm spring days. "Is that Chikusa hasn't killed him yet. I would have expected him to do the deed the second he knew he was harassing Ken. Chikusa has never been particularly reasonable when it comes to people who hurt him."

M looked uncomfortable, averting her eyes towards the bathrooms and frowning, her face twisting with indecision, "I might have said something to Chikusa about Birds noticing them because they're so touchy feely."

"Seriously?"

She threw up her hands, "How the hell was I supposed to know he'd freak out like that? I wasn't trying to set the house on fire, I mean everyone knows Birds is a some kind of sadistic weirdo and he's been staring at them for weeks, I figured they'd have noticed. But no. Not only did he not notice, he didn't even seem to understand what the hell I was talking about when I told him I'd heard Birds had a thing for kids. Seriously did they grow up under a rock or something?"

He snorted again, shrugging, "Nah, hotel rooms mostly at least since we've been together. Before that I have no damn idea, but it's probably safe to say wherever it was it wasn't what you'd call a nurturing environment. So, you said he freaked out?"

"Yeah. All of a sudden they're not sleeping together anymore, they're sitting further apart, they're barely even talking. It was awkward and uncomfortable and kind of awful. I mean who does that?"

"Leave the kid alone. Everyone makes bad decisions sometimes," Lancia sighed, shifting a hand back through his hair. "Shit. I thought he would have at least realized if things were this bad. Fucking _Mukuro_. I swear that guy would murder a preschool for them, but he understands precisely dick about teenagers or boys or _people_. Which is hilarious because he does a really great imitation of all of three. Okay. _Fuck_. They aren't having sex or anything are they?"

M laughed, rolling her eyes, "I'll give you that one for free. I mean I'm not even sure they actually even know how that works. And Ken already said he didn't want to do anything like that in here anyway and he said it _really_ passionately, so I'm inclined to believe him."

Well, thank _fuck_ for small favors, he's not altogether certain he could handle trying to give either of them an actual sex talk that didn't consist entirely of 'could you just maybe _not_ do that while you're in prison, you crazy little bastards'. He'd had every intention of finding some informative websites to explain the actual logistics and then just teaching them how to put a condom on a cucumber or something whenever it actually came time for that sort of talk. Prison wasn't exactly stocked up on condoms, cucumbers or the Internet. And he really wasn't up for winging it, especially not as a sidebar to all this other bullshit. "Fantastic. Okay, so at least give me a hint as to what's actually happening. All Mukuro ever said about it was that they were being stupid which could mean absolutely fucking anything. He says the same thing when they can't decide what's for dinner or whose turn it is to take the garbage down or who tracked blood into the apartment or any other damn thing under the sun."

M tilted her head to the side, "You know, they told me that you went to work for them because they paid well. I don't think anyone pays that well. Besides you… don't act like someone who's just in it for the money."

_Of course_ they had, because 'we used mind control on him until he was so fucking nuts about us that he wouldn't just ditch us even when given the chance' was probably kind of awkward to just come right out with. Mind control was just so damn off-putting in casual conversation.

"There a question in there somewhere, kid?"

"Yeah. Do you-"

"LANCIA!"

He was up and halfway across the room before the third syllable of his name had passed Ken's lips, shoving people the fuck out of the way in his hurry to get to him, to them.

**-ooo-  
KEN**

"Ken, _move_…!"

When they'd walked out of the bathroom, he'd had an arm slung around Chikusa's shoulder, leaning heavily against him. He knows he probably doesn't need to, not really, not that much, and he thought Chikusa knew that too, but he didn't give him any shit about it. He just let him get away with it like he's been letting him get away with everything today and he's pretty fucking sure that it's just because he feels bad. Feels bad that he's sick, feels bad about not telling him about that Birds guy earlier maybe, feels guilty about… whatever it is that he's still not telling him about.

Whatever.

And he's not such a nice guy that he's not willing to take advantage of that to push him a little. Touch him and stay close to him and drag him around and maybe, he'd thought, if he just kept pushing he could get to the reaction he really wanted. Because he _wants_ him to complain, to tell him to get off, to knock it off, to stop being a pussy, anything, _anything_ at all. He just wants him to stop being… whatever this is. Because, fuck, he loves being close to him, but he… he wants _Chikusa_. He wants _his_ Chikusa, his prickly, standoffish partner who makes fun of him and argues with him. Not just some stranger wearing Chikusa's skin that he's allowed to touch however he wants. He could live without touching him much if he had to, but not without all the rest.

He was a little unsteady coming off the latest round of 'wanting to fucking kill himself so he can stop dry heaving into filthy, gross, stinking toilets', but he actually felt a little better. Like somehow he's purged something from his system by spitting bile into that toilet bowl for ten minutes. Hell, maybe he had. Either way he felt a little better, okay enough that even through he'd been wobbling a little he probably could have gotten by with just a hand on his back or a shoulder to lean on. Instead, he made a big fucking production of draping himself across Chikusa's shoulders, a trick because it meant Chikusa had to stoop a little and he almost had to walk on his tiptoes because Chikusa is taller than he is by quite a bit. It was kind of funny and he did it a little bit because he felt like shit and just wanted to be close to him, because being near Chikusa made everything better. But he also did it because he _knows_ it's awkward as _hell_ and it _has_ to annoy him and he _wants_ Chikusa to tell him to knock it off because maybe then they can just go back to normal and he can stop feeling like he's trying to shove himself back into a place he doesn't fit anymore.

So when Chikusa told him to move and gave him a light shove with his elbow that sent him stumbling to the side, he'd been a little pissed because it kind of hurt, but he'd mostly just been relieved because this was what he wanted. This was what he…

What he….

It was just a grunt.

Just a grunt quiet enough to be barely heard over the general din of the main hall, but Ken's hearing had always been better than most even now when his head was pounding and his throat felt raw and he could still just smell the remnants of that fucking stench even though they were about as far from their cell as they could be and still be inside.

Just a soft grunt immediately proceeded by a soft squelching sound and then the scent of blood in the air.

Blood and almonds.

And he manages to stumble back to him, to catch him before he falls, but it's a close thing and the scent of blood and poison is overwhelming and he loves that smell.

But not like this.

Not like _this_.

They hit the ground together, because his legs are like overcooked noodles and he's scrambling to get out from underneath him without hurting him worse. He needs to see how bad the wound is, because it smells… _fuck_… it smells really bad.

He thinks he's probably shouting for Lancia, for Mukuro, for anyone, but he's not sure. He can't even hear his own voice above the sound of static panic roaring in his ears. He's managed to get turned around enough, to shift enough to see the wound and his vision seems to narrow to that point, to his own hands slapping down over the ragged tear across Chikusa's stomach. Over the blood that is bubbling and leaking up across and around his hands and soaking through Chikusa's white t-shirt as it flows mostly undeterred over and through his fingers like a nightmare until someone presses one of those ugly prison-issue uniform shirts down on top of his hands, he can't hear what they're saying over the roaring in his ears. The words sound garbled and nonsensical like being in Mumbai again listening to the static-filled radio in Lancia's car and none of it makes any sense, but he nods along just the same, scrambling to press the cloth against the wound beneath his hands.

Chikusa looks pale, stunned, his glasses have fallen off somewhere and his gaze is strange and unfocused. Shock maybe? That was a thing wasn't it? He was pretty sure that was a thing that happened to people when they lost a lot of blood.

Maybe.

Probably.

_Fuck._

Why doesn't he know anything about this shit? Why doesn't he know anything? Why is he so fucking _stupid_? He'd killed so many people that he'd probably seen something like this before, hadn't he? Done this to people? He tore through a lot of stomachs. He knew it was a bad way to die.

It was a really bad way to die.

_Fuck_.

He's not sure, he's not sure, he's not… he can't _hear_ anything, smell anything, see anything beyond all this blood that should be in Chikusa. This blood that he clearly needs, that is quickly soaking into and through the shirt.

Why wouldn't it stop? Why wouldn't it _stop_?

Fuck.

_Fuck._

He told him to be fucking careful. He told him he couldn't….

He sees Chikusa cough, delicate little red drops spraying and splattering across his chin and lips and cheeks and he knows that's bad. He's knows that's bad. Chikusa lifts trembling fingers to touch them and he drops his head back against the floor, tears leaking out of the corner of his eyes when he sees the red staining his fingertips.

Ken knows he's shaking, thinks he's probably screaming, but that might just be in his head. He still can't tell, can't hear anything except the labored sound of Chikusa's breath, which he shouldn't be able to hear at all, but Chikusa has always been his whole world, so maybe it makes sense that even when his head feels like it's splitting in half and his heart is shattering like glass and the world is a screaming mess of sound and static that he can hear Chikusa's panting breath. That he can hear the too-fast beat of his heart hurrying the blood away, clear as day. That he can't stop staring at Chikusa's face and he can see him mouthing his name or maybe he's saying it and he just can't… he tries to hear him past all the rest, the yells and the guards and the blood and the laughter and the dickhead gurgling as he twitches and dies a few feet away from them with one of Chikusa's needles buried in his throat.

And just like that, everything snaps back to life and sound roars back in as Chikusa is pawing clumsily at his hands where they're clutched against the blood-soaked shirt pressed to his stomach.

"Ken? Ken…?"

"Chikusa, please, _please_," he managed, and he barely recognizes his own voice because it's harsh and broken and barely words at all. One of Chikusa's clumsy hands manage to grip his own and he's pretty sure he's sobbing even though he doesn't feel the damp of tears on his face. "I'm sorry, I didn't... I…"

"D-D-Don't be such a b-baby. Mukuro is… he's… I'm fine. I'll b-be fine."

"You're not fucking fine! You're not even a little bit fine! What did you do? Why did you… please just don't… don't leave, okay? Please? I'm sorry, I should have… I should have seen… I… Chikusa, _please_!"

"S'okay. It's okay… won't leave you… never… don't worry so much," Chikusa slurred, clutching his hand, tight, and it feels like good-bye.

Then someone is grabbing him under the arms and jerking him away, hauling him back, back and away, breaking Chikusa's grip like it's nothing. He fights, he's pretty sure he fights, jerking and scratching and kicking and shouting for him as strangers dart and scurry around him, blocking him from view, but he's not sure. He's not sure because there's a pain in his chest, brief and sharp, then again when he keeps struggling and once more until the world fades, oblivion running into his brain with the force of a mac truck as he feels his body, jerk and twitch and shiver, pain sizzling through abused and twitching muscles as everything goes black.

**-ooo-  
MUKURO**

He had been dreaming.

Dreaming of those first moments.

Of life or something like it.

The first thing he had known or at least the first thing he had understood was fear.

A child's fear of the dark, of failure, of success maybe, but looming largest of all was the fear of dying.

A child's fear of death was not the same as the fear held by adults, he'd learned later. Adults who run fast and faster in the hopes of escaping the icy clutches of a dark and inevitable foe for even just one more day. An adult's fear was the fear of a coward.

Nor is it the fear of the elderly or the terminally ill at the end of their days that fear death as a visitor come too late or too early or not at all. A fear that accepts the inevitability, but fears the timing. The fear of a rational mind is that of the elderly and the ill.

No, a child's fear of death was a subtle dread, a fear unexplained and barely understood, steeped and brewed in the idea of disappearing, vanishing utterly and leaving not a trace behind. Children, on the whole, he learned in the years after, do not understand death as a concept. They can't quite conceive of what it truly is and means and therefore are incapable of accepting it. They understand only that the things they love will go away and will not return.

It was this fear that called him, formed him, created him. That eventually brought six souls together to complete him, to create one entity bound into a prison of flesh when before he'd been… somewhere else, something else, someone else… others. He didn't understand what was happening in the beginning, in those first moments. Where he was or why or even whether he was anything or anyone at all, all he knew was the fear that seemed to grip him, hold him, imprison him with loosely fitted chains. Ties he couldn't escape even as he was cast out into the abyss again and again, dragged screaming through all those Hells, down all those thorny paths. In the end he lay exhausted, raw and ragged, curled up and aching within that boy's flesh, that boy's mind, balled tight as he imagined himself as something smooth, perfect, untouchable instead of the tattered mess of an existence he truly was.

It was the screams that woke him, little by little, then as they did now.

The scream that echoed in his head did not so much nudge him from sleep as it rocketed through him, summoned his presence with the force of a hurricane, undeniable as it swept him up and sent him barreling through to wakefulness.

The web jangled, pulled taunt as the stitching stretched and bent, on the verge of breaking.

_Chikusa._

He was bleeding, dying, and it was Ken that was screaming, screaming with every fiber of his being as he shouted for help, crying out through the web of connection that bound them together, that made them as much a part of him as the lives that had formed him. He slid into Chikusa's skin and while he couldn't feel the pain, he could feel the damage that caused it.

_I can't leave you alone for a moment._

_Mukuro._

And he sounded so damn relieved that Mukuro had to restrain himself from just letting him bleed a while longer just to remind him that he wasn't… that he _wasn't_… but, honestly, he couldn't be certain how much more Chikusa could really afford to bleed as it was. He knew he was probably biting his own lip bloody with the crippling need to lash out, but that didn't matter now, nothing mattered except that Chikusa survive. He could always punish him later.

_It's fine. I have you. I have you. I'll take care of it, you. You're going to be…. It's not… it isn't so bad._

_Liar._

And he was, of course. He was a terrible liar. The blade had nicked an artery whether by luck or skill and Chikusa's blood had always been strange. They'd made it strange. It was different to hold, difficult to manage, he could slow the bleeding and repair the most vital things, but he couldn't hold them forever. He shoved panic down and away, shut it down because he didn't have time to panic now. To be… he needed to be _efficient_. He couldn't….

_It's nothing I can't handle. You're not allowed to die, Chikusa Kakimoto. Not now, not yet, I still have a use for you. Just see if you can't calm Ken down before he…_

…Ken was in bad shape as well, he could feel the ache of Ken's pain in his bones, worrying at his nerves like a dog at a bone even as he tried to focus on Chikusa, on severed veins and arteries, on his punctured kidney. Ken was very bad, he shouldn't be this bad. He'd only been gone a week. How had….

He couldn't do this now. He couldn't do this.

_Just calm him down, all right? You're in charge of Ken._

_Since when am I in charge of Ken?_ Chikusa replied and the flat attempt at joke was like a punch in the gut. Chikusa hadn't ever really been one for jokes, especially not with him.

_Since always, that's why I keep you both around, so you can keep each other out of trouble. Of course, I might need to rethink this policy as you apparently both suck at it._

_We kind of do,_ Chikusa answered, punchy with false cheer and sounding not at all like himself.

He's already lost so much blood.

Was he in shock?

It didn't matter. He couldn't figure this out in a matter of moments while trying to use his illusions to create and patch, to stop the relentless flow of blood, to fool Chikusa's body and prevent him from going into shock if he wasn't already there, to stabilize him if he could. He could worry about Ken later, worry about how all this happened later. For now he just needed to reconstruct the damaged tissue, put out the proverbial fires. He could do this. He'd studied the human body for just this reason, to know what to do, to be able to do it after what had happened to Lancia in Mumbai, to Chikusa in New York. He had needed to know how to heal rather than just how to destroy for once.

He _could_ do this.

Still, medical attention would be necessary, vital; he couldn't risk having to sustain these alterations indefinitely if he didn't have to.

He could hear Chikusa speaking, trying to reassure Ken, he wasn't sure how successful he was, he could still hear Ken cursing and shouting as Lancia finally had to drag him up out of the way as the people from the infirmary finally arrived to do their job.

Then Ken's screaming turned, became physical pain and then silence, which was worse and a thousand times more worrisome. He tried to reach out to him while keeping most of his focus on Chikusa, but he couldn't grasp him, his senses slipping off silent, black walls that quaked, cracked and lined, pulsing red and yellow with pain. A quick glance, caught as they loaded Chikusa on a gurney to wheel him to surgery, told him that Ken was having some sort of seizure.

_Dammit_.

Lancia was with him, he knew Lancia would take care of him, would do whatever needed to be done. That would have to be enough. He needed to stay with Chikusa.

**-ooo-  
LANCIA**

"What the fuck did you just do to him?" Lancia snapped.

He gathered Ken's limp, shaking body in his arms and lowered him to the floor as gently as he could manage. He wasn't sure what the fuck you were supposed to do for a fucking seizure, which was what he was pretty sure this was, but he was pretty sure not allowing Ken to fucking concuss himself on the floor was the list. So, he got him down to the ground and rolled him on his side so he didn't drown in his own fucking vomit or anything and stayed close. As if he could protect him from this or from everything that had just happened. He couldn't, he knew that, but he could keep him from cracking his fucking head on the cement at least.

His nerves felt scorched raw by the image of Chikusa lying in a puddle of his own blood, Ken screaming for help that seemed to take too long, that had been far too fucking slow to show up. He'd been so goddamn worried that something would happen to them while he was gone, while he was locked in that goddamn little room, but he'd been less than half a room away and he hadn't been able to stop any of it. He'd been worrying about silly shit like sex talks and Chikusa had been getting a shank in his gut. All he'd been able to do for him, for either of them, was bully people into helping and slip the needle from that bastard's neck so the guards wouldn't be able to tie what was happening to that dickbag back to Chikusa. Better they think he poisoned himself or something. He'd had to keep Ken restrained and out of the way when the doctor and his staff had finally shown up to rush Chikusa off. He hadn't even seen the damn guard, he'd been too busy trying to keep hold of Ken who'd turned into the human equivalent of a sack of angry cats, twisting and yowling and trying to shake his grip, clawing at his arms with blood-soaked hands.

He'd tried to tell him it would be okay, but Ken was so far beyond hearing anything that he might as well have been talking to himself. Then that total fucking idiot of a guard had shot him full of fucking tranquilizers like he was a charging fucking elephant instead of just a scared, traumatized kid.

Sure, he was a scared traumatized kid who could kill half the damn people in the prison without breaking a sweat on a good day, but these fuckers didn't know that. To them he was just a kid which made him certain he was going to bash that damn guard's head in against the concrete floor unless he came up with a damn good explanation before he was able to get off this floor.

The guard looked nervous, twitchy, "J-just what I was told to do. They said we'd probably have to knock that one out so we could get the other one out of here. It's just a tranquilizer it shouldn't have… shouldn't have done that."

"Did they tell you to nail him three times with it, you ignorant jackass? Get the heck away from us," The girl snapped, glaring up at the guard from where she'd purposefully put herself between Ken and this one guard who'd remained as all the rest had either rushed Chikusa off to infirmary or were busy clearing the room and ushering all the other prisoners to their cells. "And while you're at it, go talk to someone about getting us moved to a different damn cell. He's been sick all morning because he has a hypersensitive sense of smell and some asshole dumbed a whole bottle of cleaner in our room or something. It's the least you can do seeing as how you probably just OD'd him on tranquilizers."

"Should we take him to the infirmary?" The guard asked nervously and the girl just stared at him incredulous for a long moment.

"Get the fuck out of here. You really think they're going to have extra hands to deal with a seizure in the infirmary while Chikusa is bleeding out all over the prison? Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a child or something or are you just naturally the dumbest dick in any given room?" She blew out a loud breath, stepping a little closer to the guard. "Now, do you want to see about that new cell or do I need to start making phone calls to my lawyer? I'm pretty sure giving a minor a large enough dose of tranquilizer that you're damn lucky it didn't kill him would be _more_ than enough to get us a tidy payday _and_ send your incompetent ass to prison in the bargain. And, believe me, you're going to _love_ prison, it's a real bucket of laughs from this side of the divide."

"They told me that was the correct dosage for him!" The guard wailed and Lancia might have laughed if he didn't want to rip the little bastard's head off his shoulders so damn badly.

"Yeah, well, if that's the case then someone obviously lied to you and you're twice the fucking idiot for believing such a stupid fucking thing," Lancia snarled. "You might want to see to that, but before you do that, find an empty cell they can stay in."

"I'll… I'll see what I can do," the guard mumbled, as he hurried off.

The girl spat on the floor he'd just vacated before she turned back to face Ken and Lancia. Ken was still shivering, but the worst of the tremors seemed to have subsided for the time being so Lancia had pulled him up onto his lap so he could sprawl out on ground with him. He glanced up at the girl as she crouched down beside him, Chikusa's white, bloodstained knit cap held tight in her clenched hands. He wasn't sure where the hell she'd managed to pick it up. Not sure how it had gotten left behind. "He won't do anything," she grumbled and Lancia couldn't help but agree. Nothing in his experience here had led him to believe that anyone at this prison was the least bit fucking kind or reasonable. "Best he'll do is maybe accidentally delay anybody coming over here to force us back into the cell for a little while."

Lancia looked away from the bloody hat, focusing instead on Ken's face, "He looks like shit."

"Well, his boyfriend just got stabbed, so that's probably not great for his complexion," the girl replied, sighing.

"Huh. That official?"

"What?"

"Just surprised. Thought they'd be dancing around that for years."

"Oh," M.M. smiled weakly, her fingers tightening on the white fabric in her hands. "They totally will be. They're completely ridiculous. I just… I like to tease him about it, that's all. It's… stupid."

"Nah, Ken's fun to tease," Lancia sighed, brushing an idle hand over Ken's short, bristly hair. "Hey, do me a favor and go ahead and put the hat on him. It'll probably help if he wakes up. The smell might keep him from panicking as badly. Or it might make it worse, I don't fucking know. It's a risk either way, but… it's better than doing nothing."

Silence fell awkwardly between them as she tugged the blood-dampened cloth over Ken's hair. The contrast of white and red against his skin made his color look a little better than it had, but he still looked like hell warmed over. The last couple of months had not been kind, but… he seemed to have made a friend at least. M seemed genuinely fond of him and that would probably keep her loyal enough that he didn't have to worry about her looking out for him for a while.

_Fuck._

Well, _that_ was depressing as shit. He was beginning to think like fucking Mukuro. That was just the perfect end to a perfect fucking day.

He hoped what Chikusa had told Ken was true. Maybe he even needed to believe it was true. Sure the timing seemed way too convenient for coincidence, but if it saved Chikusa he was more than happy to accept it. Even if it did make that niggling sense of unease he'd had for days (hell, for _months_, if he were honest) just that much worse. Still, even so, he desperately wanted to believe that Mukuro was there with him, watching over him and making sure the kid was okay. They needed a fucking win right now.

"I guess so," M remarked, still tugging distractedly at the hat, twitching the cloth this way and that as if she couldn't find the exact angle she wanted. Probably just to have something to do, really. It was a little big, but not too bad a fit.

She stared down for a long moment at her red fingertips before rubbing them irritably against her uniform pants. When she next spoke her voice was hushed and hesitant, "Do you think-"

"He'll make it," Lancia snapped, his fingers tightening against Ken's arm, because he wasn't sure he would and sometimes all you could do was fake it until you could really believe it was true. "He's tougher than he looks. They all are. Can't believe he let some fucker stab him with fucking toothbrush though."

"In his defense, I don't think he's been sleeping much lately," M replied, her mouth twisting with irritation. "Neither of them have been exactly at the top of their game, since they're both stubborn _idiots_."

"Finally, something we can agree on. More unites us than divides us, huh?" Lancia chuckled, shaking his head. Ken was finally still as the seizure seemed to have run its course and his breathing was slow and shallow. There was a fine tremble running through his muscles but, other than that, he seemed like he was just sleeping.

Which meant it was time for him to go get shit done.

"Get over here, girl, and hurry the fuck up about it," he commented, laying Ken down gently on the cement and gesturing for her to take his place. "When they come back to take you both back to your cell I want you to cause the biggest fucking scene you can manage."

"Why? Where are you going?" She replied, dropping to her knees and picking Ken's head up off the ground to settle it in her lap with a grunt. "Oof, he's heavier than he looks, isn't he?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he is. Look, he's gonna freak the fuck out when he wakes up. And you're just gonna need to lie your ass off if you want to keep him calm, okay? Tell him you talked to Mukuro. Tell him Chikusa is okay. Tell him I'll be back soon. Tell him whatever you have to tell him to keep him calm. He's been sick and this pushed him over the edge so he'll probably be pretty out of it for a while. Just let him keep the hat, stay close when you can and fucking lie to him until you have something better to tell him or he doesn't believe you anymore. Can you do that?"

"Yeah," M.M. replied, "I suppose I can. You're going after Birds."

It wasn't a question.

He shrugged, pushing himself to his feet, "Not a lot of other good options right now. So, I'm gonna go have a talk with that asshole and then I'm gonna make sure they _have_ to move you both to another cell. Ken's probably got this thing on him, looks like a partial set of animal teeth."

"Yeah, I've seen it."

"Great. Make sure you find it and keep it for him in case they haul him down to check him out in the infirmary. Take care of him. And, fair warning, kid: Don't you dare betray us. Because if you do you'd better hope to hell I'm the one who gets to you first, because I'll just kill you. _They'll_ make you suffer for it."

**-ooo-**

As it turned out, Birds was easy enough to find. All he had to do was follow the smell of bird shit and the soft cackle of laughter. None of which was really surprising, what was surprising was that when he got to the cell door, the old man smiled as if he were genuinely glad to see him and stood up.

"Mukuro Rokudou, I presume?" The words made his stomach sink. Birds' smile was ingratiating, if a little nervous, and he smoothed his hair back before offering a hand for him to shake. Lancia grit his teeth, letting himself forcing his expression into something he hoped didn't look as much like grimace it felt. He stared at the hand for a long moment, before ignoring it in favor of addressing the man it belonged to.

"It is interesting to finally meet you, I see your reputation is quite well deserved," he commented and he found it was easier than he liked to fall into the soft, drawling cadence Mukuro used with clients and potential victims. Mukuro as they knew him was all sharp edges and brittle humor, easily irritated and often darkly amused, but he'd been possessed by that chill presence enough over their years together to be able to appreciate and play up the difference. Funny, the things they picked up from each other. He wondered what Mukuro had picked up from him, if he'd picked up anything at all. "I must say that that was a rather extraordinary piece of work. Did you time it that way on purpose so that Chikusa would take the blow? I didn't catch the incident myself, but it would seem a bit simplistic to think Chikusa was both the victim and the target when you'd gone to so much effort to put Ken in a bad way."

He was going to need to boil his fucking brain after this. It wasn't a perfect imitation, Mukuro's speech wasn't actually that fucking pretentious, but it was close enough to be disturbing as hell.

Birds smiled, slim and appreciative and disgusting, "Oh ho, it is rare to find someone else who can truly understand and appreciate my work. Though from what I have heard, you're no stranger to manipulation yourself. Yes, I anticipated he would intercept any blow meant for the injured one. Of course, I never imagined they'd actually hit him with so many tranquilizers or that they would have the impact they did. An unfortunate revelation, as it would have been far more to my tastes if he hadn't found oblivion quite so soon, but I suppose there is a certain poetry to be had in watching a body turn on itself so completely."

"Indeed. What did you use to achieve that effect, might I ask?" He inquired, running fingers along the edge of a shelf, over the spines of the books piled in the corner, itching to throw one of them at the asshole's fucking head. He locked his jaw and turned his face away, trying desperately to appear no more than idly curious. "They made mention of some terrible smell that neither of his cellmates were able to discern."

He was fortunate that Birds was the sort who apparently just fucking _loved_ the sound of his own voice, "Ah, _that_, well, _that_ was really quite a simply matter. The interesting thing about the human mind, such as it is, is that we quickly adapt to changing circumstances. Mr. Joshima is interesting and unique, given what your benefactor has told me about his particular talents," his fingers tapped, probably unintentionally against a short stack of well-worn papers on the corner of the small table that sat beneath the cell's window. "By the very nature of his senses being as incredibly sensitive as they are, he's actually incapable of adapting quickly to new smells or tastes or sounds the way most people are. In here it's a bit like having a very peculiar disability. You see his body, as I'm sure you realize, has been altered immensely to allow for the enhanced senses and the physical and hormonal changes invoked by the inserts. The problem, really, is his sense of smell is, even without the inserts, far more sensitive than that of an ordinary person. The trick was using scents that would provoke both a sensory and an emotional response to slowly erode his natural defenses. It, of course, worked best when he was using the insert, but even without the insert in it was still quite effective. I sent my birds to mark the room with a variety of foul scents: polecat fluid, peroxide, chloroform, just a drop or two of something different each day was all that was really necessary. On days when he was using the insert I used wolf pheromones from a variety of different wolves and large predators. Not enough to alert him to what was happening, as I wasn't certain how much he knew of his condition, just enough to keep him on edge, to irritate his already overloaded senses and keep them engaged and tense so that the fouler scents would have a greater impact. Honestly, he'd probably have gotten like this eventually without my assistance, enclosed environments will always be troublesome for him, but I obviously needed things to progress more quickly. When I heard you were returning this morning, I had one of my special friends slip a bit of each into their cell. Not enough that the others would notice, but more than enough to make it quite impossible for him to stay there."

"You still have more of all these scents, I assume?"

"Of course," he gestured to a pill container half hidden beneath one of the birdcages on the desk. "I'm so excited to see how his grief impacts his deteriorating condition. He's a rather overdramatic teenager as well as being oversensitive, exhausted and co-dependent, I'm quite confidant that once the other boy dies this one will kill himself within a matter of days." He touched shaking fingers to his lips, his eyes glazing over and Lancia felt like he was going to be sick. "I can't wait to see what it will take to actually do the deed if his body is as capable of healing injury as I expect in must be."

Lancia snagging the pill container and threw it with as much strength as he could muster through the cell window to strike against an electrical post a few yards beyond where it shattered into pieces, liquid spraying everywhere.

Birds turned to him with wide eyes and a stunned expression as he lashed out and kicked him in the side of his knee, just hard enough to pop the kneecap out before leaning forward and slapping a hand over the man's mouth to muffle the scream, shoving him down against the rank-ass fucking bed. He really didn't want to think about what this disgusting piece of shit had been doing in this bed or what he'd been thinking about while he was doing it. He's pretty sure if he thought about too much that he'd just kill the fucker now and be done with it.

Outside the cell, in another world beyond the fog of rage in his head, he could hear the girl, her voice loud even over the din and murmur of other prisoners, easily pulling focus and keeping the guards gathered around her from hearing the muffled screams of Birds.

He heard her wail that they were treating her boyfriend like he was some sort of common criminal.

Yeah, she'd fit in with the boys just fine, he decided smiling grimly as he turned his attention back to the old man in his grasp.

He leaned forward, smiling wide and insincere, "Yeah, I'll bet that smarts, huh? You so much as look at one of my kids again, I'll come back in here and shatter that fucking kneecap. Now, you're old as hell, so I'd recommend saying you took a bad fall and hurt that knee all on your own. I'm sure they'll buy it. And let's just be fucking clear about this: If you fuck with me, or any of my kids, ever again, I will come back in here and crush every bone in your body into powder. Are we fucking clear?"

Enthusiastic nodding greeted his words as tears leaked from the corners of the old man's eyes and Lancia smiled grimly as he snatched the papers off the table and shoved them down the back of his pants with his free hand. "Good. Now, I'm gonna leave and you're gonna count to twenty and then you can start screaming your fucking head off. I'm sure someone will come see to that knee eventually."

He shoved back, leaving the weeping man to his pain as he stormed out of the cell. The girl was still carrying on, gesturing wildly to the half-circle of guards that had gathered around her to watch her in what he could only assume was morbid fascination. They didn't even look up as he passed behind them and slipped into the cell Ken had pointed out to him earlier. It was plain enough, just the bunks and sheets and shit and a few personal items on what he assumed was the girl's side of the room. No telling what was actually causing the problem, of course, so it would all have to go.

He cracked his knuckles and set to work ripping the bedding to shreds, dashing the personal items across the floor hard enough to break or shatter them. The reek of floral perfume assaulted his nose as he smashed a perfume bottle, making his eyes water. A good solid kick tore the sink from the wall and sent water gushing from the broken pipe. He'd saved the bunks for last, knowing they'd make the most noise and almost certainly attract the kind of attention he couldn't afford until the job was pretty much done. He bent and twisted the thin, sturdy metal, wrenching it from where it was bolted to the concrete floor and bending each one into an odd pretzel shape before dashing them against the bars, and pulling them around and tightening them down so that there would be no way to remove them short of getting something in there to cut them free. He was just wrenching the last bar into place when he felt the pinch and then the zip and pop of electricity coursing through his body.

_Huh._

He hadn't even realized those fuckers had stun guns.

"Fucking ouch," he grouched glaring over his shoulder at the guards in the doorway before sitting down hard on the concrete floor. There wasn't enough juice in that thing to really put him down, but it certainly made him less motivated to continue especially since the work he really needed to do was all but done.

He flopped back against the concrete floor, laughing at the cautious way the guards approached him as he stuck his wrists in the air, pressed together. "Oops, sorry, looks like I just don't know my own strength, huh? Guess you better take me to your leader."

He met the girl's steady gaze as they hauled him out of the block and she gave him a quick, curt nod. He sure as fuck hoped that meant that she intended to do as she'd promised. He was starting to like her, so he'd really hate to have to let Mukuro kill her.

**-ooo-  
**THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 156  
UNAFFILIATED  
TRADITORE  
January 22, 2003

**WARDEN PELLEGRINO**

He was really starting to hate these fucking kids.

As if he didn't have enough on his plate with this Mario Rossi incident….

"Did you have some point you were making by destroying several thousand dollars worth of prison property?" He inquired tiredly, glaring up at where Mukuro Rokudou kneeling in the middle of his office, his hands shackled and bound in front of him. He looked… bored. Like he couldn't have cared less about being there.

Lancia Salvatore A.K.A Mukuro Rokudou had only been out of the damn Box for about two hours.

Two damn hours and one man was mysteriously dead, one of those fucking Esterneo kids had been stabbed, the other one had been doped up with enough tranquilizers to kill a small bear by a guard who swore up and down that someone – though he conveniently couldn't remember who – had told him that was the proper dosage, Birds had managed to _mysteriously_ dislocate his knee and then this guy had done enough property damage to put him over budget on repairs for the next two years.

Not that he was really going to need to be concerned about that, because he highly doubted he'd be holding onto this particular job for very much longer. A fact he couldn't even bring himself to be mildly upset about at this point as this job just wasn't worth the trouble.

And, of course, Mukuro Rokudou was completely unrepentant. "Me? Nah, I'm not deep like that. I just really like to destroy things when I'm angry and I've had a hell of a week thanks to you." The prisoner replied grinning and shrugging his shoulders amiably.

"Oh? I've got to say, Mr. Rokudou... should I call you Mr. Rokudou or do you prefer Mr. Salvatore?"

"You asked me that last time too and I still don't give a fuck what you call me," Lancia replied, shrugging.

"As you like. Mr. Salvatore, your group has just been causing me all kinds of trouble this week. First, you killed a man in the infirmary. Then Mr. Rossi fell into some sort of coma for no obvious reason that the docs can find. Then a man breaks into the prison to pose as one of my guards because he had an interest in Mr. Rossi and ended up killing five of my guards before leaving. Then just today Mr. Kakimoto is stabbed and his attacker immediately drops dead for some unknown reason, Mr. Joshima has what was according to my guard's report 'a really nasty seizure' after being hit with too many tranquilizer darts and now you've wreaked their cell so badly that they have to be moved to another one after Miss Malone specifically requested and was denied a cell transfer. That seems like a hell of a series of coincidences, doesn't it?"

"Does it?" The prisoner snarled, his face reddening with rage. "Because it sounds to me like this prison is run by a bunch of incompetent idiots. Are seriously fucking telling me that you let some random freak break in here to creep on my kid? Fucking _really_? I thought this was supposed to be prison not a damn sideshow. How the hell did anyone even know he was here? Are you guys fucking _advertising_ or something? Come one, come all, see the wild murderer of Esterneo in chains?" He spat on the floor near his feet and the Warden stepped back frowning, stunned by the sudden fury and threat of violence in the air.

He cleared his throat and motioned for the guards who stood near the door to come forward. He was about ready for this conversation such as it was, to be over. "Prisoner, you will watch your tone or I will-"

The prisoner laughed, sharp and edged with something that almost sounded like hysteria. "You'll fucking _what_? Stick me back in the Box? One of my kids is in a coma, another is on an operating table and the third is, hopefully, just fucking unconscious. That's my up side for the day. That one of my kids might _just_ be unconscious. I honestly couldn't give two shits what you do to me, you asshole. So, who the hell was it? The guy who broke in here? Did you even manage to figure that out or did he stroll in and out of here free and fucking clear? What did he do while he was here? Did he hurt him? Is he the reason he's in a coma? What the fuck did you incompetent pricks let happen to him?"

The warden grit his teeth painfully, staring down at the prisoner on his knees before him. He'd heard about Lancia Salvatore. Hell, he imagined everyone in the whole of Italy had heard about Lancia Salvatore.

The Cacciatore murders had been one of those really interesting unsolved crime cases that people had gossiped and theorized about for _years_. The incident had been violent and sensational and baffling, full of contradictions and suspicions of shoddy investigative work; basically it was the sort of stuff that crime buffs and paparazzi wet themselves over. The disappearance of Lancia Salvatore, the strongest man in Italy and the fact that the police almost instantly laid the entire thing at his feet, stating overwhelming physical evidence (even in the face of a dozen strange incongruities) had been a huge scandal. There were a dozen conspiracy theories that had become popular over the years about what had _really_ happened there and why and what had happened to Lancia Salvatore was always at the core of most of those theories.

He'd been a constant jovial figure in the community, well known for his love and devotion to his Famiglia.

He'd been seen playing cards in town in the hours after his family had been slaughtered and then he'd disappeared without a trace, last seen walking home with a spring in his step on that warm summer day as if nothing was wrong at all.

Sightings of Lancia had been popular for the next few years as the crime scene photos had been all over the news over and over again after the incident and with each new expose, each new theory brought another round of Lancia sightings. He was like Elvis, blurry snapshots in gossip rags and unsubstantiated rumors. He'd been seen at the beach, in Bologna, in a store in Naples. He'd been all over Italy and Spain and America and Argentina. He'd been seen in London, in New York, in Bangkok and Mumbai. Most people had seemed to believe he was dead, that he'd been buried or burned and the ashes scattered so the police would focus their investigation on him. Now that he'd been found and imprisoned, the mafia was content to let the public continue believing that, to continue to allow the myth and legend of Cacciatore to perpetuate itself until they finally, finally grew bored with it. A mystery only truly endured when the possibility of an eventual answer existed after all.

There was one particularly famous photo from the crime scene that he'd seen probably a few dozen times over the years as it was one of the largest and strangest inconsistencies. The photo was of a bunch of children laid out in a laundry room, just laid out all in a row and neat as you please across the floor. They were facedown, arms folded beneath their heads, like they'd all just fallen asleep there. Only the bright patches of blood that were visible beneath their folded arms made it obvious they were dead. The idea that the man who'd done that was now freaking out because one of the boys who'd been captured with him, the one who had himself confessed to murdering upwards of forty people at Esterneo, was being peeped at by some stranger was incredibly surreal.

"As far as we've been able to discern, he was only interested in observing the boy," he answered through gritted teeth.

He didn't owe this man anything.

He _knew_ he didn't owe him anything.

Sure, he'd thought about selling the boy, contemplated it, but he hadn't done it in the end and that was all that mattered. He was certain nothing he had done had hurt this man or his kids. Certainly he was aware it was a strange set of coincidences, but that had nothing to do with him. If anything it was this man and those children who had caused him no end of problems. He should be the one who was angry.

The warden's lips twisted with irritation.

Of course, more importantly, he had a vested interest in discovering who that man was. So, perhaps, it wasn't completely unusual that he found himself imparting to the kneeling man the precious few things they'd managed to learn over the past few days.

It was depressingly little, but he told the prisoner about the conversation he'd had with that man over the radio (leaving out the more incriminating bits), about the conflicting reports about what the man looked like, about the sharp-edged metallic blocks that had been left behind in the surveillance room. He noticed as he spoke that the prisoner's face seemed to drain of emotion as if something had funneled it all away and by the time he'd finished the man's gaze was dead.

He wasn't even a little bit surprised when the man gave him little more than a shrug in response. He hadn't really expected anything.

"Take him down to shower and then put him in the Rossi boy's cell down in Solitary," he sighed, feeling every one of his years as he sat back down behind his desk. "You'll be there a month. Try not to break anything or I'll extend your stay."

He didn't owe this man _anything_.

He _didn't_.

"You should know that the Kakimoto boy went into hypovolemic shock," he commented, just as the guard was about to exit the office with the prisoner in tow. "They're still working on him, but it's... the outlook isn't promising."

The prisoner nodded stiffly, not looking back at him and followed the guard out.

It seemed like he could still hear the sound of clinking chains long after he was gone.

**-ooo-  
CHIKUSA**

He dreamt of being small.

Sitting beneath a table in his mother's house. He could hear her talking to someone, soft and deferential. He was sitting on the floor hiding beneath the table with a doll in his lap that some lady at the church had given him. His parents had been fighting earlier, loudly, and he'd wanted to disappear since he was a little afraid that they'd been fighting about him. He hadn't known all the words, his parents often used words that sounded made up and complicated and when he was nervous all the words became even harder to understand, but he recognized 'boy' and 'hurt' and 'Chikusa' and 'man' well enough for it to make him uneasy.

Then his father had left and the man with the shiny shoes had come. His shoes were very black and so shiny that when Chikusa bent his face over them he could see himself reflected back, his skin pale and his hair long and dark where it fell straight and neat around his face. His mother said it was beautiful and so she couldn't bear to cut it.

The man with the shiny shoes had brought something with him. And he had settled his burden on the floor near the wood stove. It was a boy with blue eyes who Chikusa could just see if he ducked his head and peered around the drape of the tablecloth though he wasn't sure he wanted to. There was something about the boy that made him even more nervous than his parents' angry words.

As he watched instead from the safety of the warm, quiet space beneath the table with his mother's bare feet inches away. He could see the boy's hands snatching colored blocks from empty air and building towers with them as if they were real, one after another, the bricks were piled higher and higher until they finally all came tumbling down, spilling across the floor, red and exploding into liquid as they hit, splattering the table, the cloth and them both liberally with the warm, red goo. It spotted his glasses, his face, his arms and hands.

He heard a flurry of movement and glanced up from his red-spotted hands to find the boy staring at him from inches away, one eye dyed red by the splattering paint.

"Found you," the boy commented, sounding so strangely, terribly relieved that the sound wrapped around his heart and squeezed. "Time to come home."

He nodded, letting the boy take his hand, lead him out from under the table and into the bright light of the world beyond.

"…Stabilizing. Let's get him stitched up," an unfamiliar voice said and it seemed loud and his eyelids were terribly heavy, far too heavy to lift and he can vaguely feel hands and fingers messing about within him. A wriggling, pulling sensation in his gut that makes him want to make them stop touching him, but the best he can manage is to make his fingers twitch.

There were more voices, but they murmured and he couldn't understand their words.

Mukuro's presence is a cool, firm weight within him.

_M-Mukuro?_

_I'm here. They're almost done. I've reconstructed enough of the veins and arteries to make their job simple enough by allowing them to deal with one issue at a time. It's making them a bit neurotic about it since every time they think they have you sorted, something else starts leaking, but then they're already having a hard enough time figuring out how you managed to survive long enough for them to work on you in the first place, so they'll likely just dismiss the entire thing as one odd incident and, if not, I'll just kill them once they're no longer of any use to us. It'll be fine. Nothing to worry about, I've taken care of it. I'll take care of everything._

_Okay,_ Chikusa replied, soft and nervous, because he'd never heard Mukuro babble before and he's pretty sure that's what this is. _It's okay._

Mukuro makes a strange noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh and a sob. It was always strange to hear such things like that in his head. _Shouldn't I be the one telling you that?_

He wanted to shrug, but he couldn't. _Seemed like you needed to hear it more._

_You almost died. You're not allowed to die._

He's not sure he's ever heard Mukuro sound so scared.

_Sorry._

_Don't be sorry, Chikusa, just… just be more careful. You know that I'm not… I can't always be around to, won't always…_

He isn't sure what makes him think it, say it, when it's been something they've avoided for so long, danced and shuffled around, the invisible elephant in their proverbial room, recognizable only by the space it occupies, the way it looms large around them. He'd like to say it was the drugs, whatever they were giving him to make him numb and loopy and loose, but he knows it probably has more to do with the idea of Mukuro not being around. Of Mukuro abandoning them, of him leaving them or pulling away, hiding away more than he already has.

They lie to each other so often about so many things.

_It's not your fault. None of this is your fault._

He regrets it instantly, but there is no way to snatch the words back when he feels Mukuro recoil, pull away from him, feels walls slamming into place between them, doors locked and barred.

_Now we both know that's not true, Chikusa._ And his voice seems so cold. _Try to get some rest, I have to concentrate, the surgery is at a critical point. I'll check back in with you later._

And just like that he's gone before Chikusa even has a chance to begin formulating an explanation, an apology.

He doesn't miss the irony of the fact that he's the one who almost died and yet he was always the one who felt like he should be apologizing.

Nor the fact that it isn't the first time and probably won't be the last either.

**-ooo-  
**THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 155  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 23, 2003

**MUKURO**

Hours pass before Chikusa is wheeled out of the operating room and into the infirmary. He's pretty sure they might have put him somewhere else if there were somewhere else to put him, but there's not.

He's _glad_ there's not.

They slide his bed into place beside Mukuro's and hook him up to all the monitors and the IV and make a last check of his stitches, across his belly and across his chest where they'd had to open him up to work on his heart. He casts an illusion around himself, around the bed, so that he can turn onto his side. The chains that keep his wrists locked loosely to the bed rails clinked as he curled his knees close to chest, the needle in his arm pulling painfully despite the tape as he tried to bring it in tight against his stomach. He could see him better like that. The pale of his skin, the stark black marks of the barcode on his cheek, the spill of dark hair across the pillow. His face obscured by the oxygen mask he wore. He knew it was a precaution, but he still couldn't help the shiver that shuddered through him to see it. He wasn't sure why that mask bothered him more than all the other things he knew were there, more than all the rest of the equipment, just that it did.

They finished their examinations and pulled the curtain shut, a soft metallic swoosh of sound as little metal rings scurried across the curtain bar and Chikusa was hidden from view.

He shuddered again, gripping his knees tighter. He wanted to vanish, to disappear utterly, but his ties to them held him as firmly as they ever had. He wanted to be alone, he never wanted to be alone, he needed them, he hated them and everything hurt. Everything hurt because he'd felt it. He'd felt how close it had been. How near a thing it had been this time.

Felt the slip and tremble of Chikusa's life as it dangled off the edge, as he used his illusions to repair the veins and shore up the faulty heart valve that had been overtaxed by the traumatic nature of the injuries. Every time he thought he had the situation under control, handled, there was a new emergency. Like fighting a fire when he couldn't find the source. He'd barely gotten there in time, barely managed to save him each and every time and now, now that he'd done enough, now that Chikusa was as safe and relatively stable and patched up and sleeping as he could be, at least for the moment, he could allow the fear to shake through him.

He couldn't keep doing this.

He'd left them and they were… they had… it had been so close, so near a thing. He'd been dreaming of safety while they'd been here dying by inches. And he could pretend that it was coincidence, that it wasn't anything more than that, but… _but_… when did coincidence stop being coincidence? How many times did he need to ignore the obvious before it finally managed to destroy them all?

Who stood to gain from hiding Esterneo?

Who had chosen New York?

Had arranged that job for Chikusa that last night? The job that put him on that rooftop?

Had chosen Mumbai?

Was needlessly delaying their escape because he needed more time to recover, more time to make sure they had somewhere to go, more plans to make?

Who had been absent when they needed him most?

Hadn't he felt something staring at him, watching him from the dark, smiling at him all this time? Those bloodthirsty, terrible, aching bits of himself that he'd locked away to keep from lashing out at them as he had then. He'd always been a danger to them. And even though he'd tried so hard to keep them safe, he'd never been willing to do the one thing he probably should have done all those years ago. He couldn't just push them away, couldn't make them leave, because he didn't _want_ to. He didn't _want_ to be without them, but he knew he shouldn't have kept them either.

There were no good choices, no safe choices, only choices with potentially less disastrous consequences.

He needed them to be _safe_.

No matter what that meant.

He thought he might understand why this was happening.

He wished he didn't, but he did.

He was hurting them again.

He'd been so careful. So _damn_ careful, but he'd still….

**-ooo-  
**THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 2574  
ESTERNEO  
NORTHERN ITALY  
June 9, 1996

**MUKURO**

He was newly born, still raw and aching, and they were… _kind_. Had marked themselves for him, bound them together so tightly and they didn't even know, couldn't know, what it meant. What _they_ meant. He barely knew. It was so jumbled in his head still, confused and mixed up with those other lives that were still pulling at him, aching to be recognized and acknowledged and free. He felt steadier with Ken and Chikusa lingering at the edge of his mind, connected and grounded in a way he hadn't been before, but he felt… stranger too.

He could feel them on the edge of his consciousness soft and loud, agitated and buzzing with emotion as they moved through the halls. Emotions like fireworks, yellow and blue, bursting to life around him making him twitch and flinch. And it was just getting worse, a buzzing in his head not unlike someone shouting at him from down a long hallway demanding that he shut them up, put them down, make it stop. It was already so noisy in his head. Already so crowded and it was so difficult to focus. They were… there was a word for it. A word that he couldn't quite… what was it? Interesting, maybe? Exciting? Annoying? Something. Maybe all those things, but they were also… almost too much.

He's staring at the wall at the end of the hall, at those bodies there and there is something about the tableau that makes his head ache even more than it already does. Something wavering and strange and he is only half listening when he hears Ken comment on it, how it doesn't make sense and he's about to answer, about to tell him that he agrees when he feels her. He feels the girl's mind, all panic and fear and he can't remember if she's one of the ones they marked for him, she doesn't seem familiar, but that means almost nothing, his brain already feels like an overfull mixing bowl. Too many ingredients whipping together, slopping over the sides and he's not sure… how to process most of it, any of it.

There's so much, too much.

He just needs a moment. Just needs it to stop. Just for it to be quiet or quieter and he's still so….

He feels her before he sees her, before he hears the door click open and he's moving Ken's body as if it's his own, but the control is strange, off somehow and while he encourages Ken to pull the trigger, it is Ken who actually does it, who apologizes and he's so surprised that he barely realizes that he's looking at them through her eyes.

Staring at the three of them and feeling her fear, sticky like tar, all around him. She knows them, recognizes those two from the room and the third from _before_. Remembers the feel of him in her brain, squirming about like a worm in an apple, chewing pathways through the meat of her mind. How happy he'd been, how lucky he'd told her she was to be a part of their Famiglia, how good things would be and how he very much hoped they'd get along.

How she'd cried and begged him to leave her alone, them to leave her alone. How much she wanted to go _home_.

A noise, loud and squealing and sharp, like interference on the line, crashes through him and it feels like screaming. Her fear is pounding all around him, incessant and terrifying, and the noise is too much, there's so much he doesn't understand and he just wants it to stop. He _needs_ it to stop and as they lift the gun and pull the trigger, he's not sure how much of it is _him_ and how much of it is _her_.

He'd like to pretend that he didn't use what tenuous control he had over her to shift the aim.

He'd _like_ to pretend he didn't, but he knows better.

He _knows_.

Ken saves him, luck and instinct and that abnormal speed allowing him to be fast enough to shove Chikusa out of the way, to allow Ken to take the hit for him. Mukuro snaps back to reality, horror speeding through him as he realizes what he's done. He's purely himself once more, her terror still bitter on his tongue as he stares at her, trembling and afraid. Panic choked him, froze his feet to the floor as Ken cursed, her bullet lodged in his side. The girl tried to run, realizing what she had done, what _they_ had done, what he had made her do. She turned and sprinted away down the hallway, her mind awash with panic that might be his as much as hers, he's not sure. He doesn't care.

Not about her.

She doesn't get far. Chikusa snatches the trident from Mukuro's shaking hand and throws it at the retreating girl, killing her. Her body tumbled down the hall propelled by her own momentum and the force of the blow. Mukuro couldn't have brought himself to stop him, to speak even if he tried, as fear jangled through him with a sound like laughter.

He hadn't _meant_ to do that.

He didn't… he wasn't… he didn't want to hurt them. He didn't, he _didn't_. They were… they were _his_. They were… he didn't _want_ to hurt them. It would have been so easy to let them go. If they'd just kept walking, if they hadn't noticed him, wanted him, accepted him. They could have gone and maybe there would have always been cold, empty spaces within his cobbled together uncertain soul where they could have belonged, but he would have been the only one who knew that. It was harder to keep them, to endure them and he isn't sure… isn't sure how to do it. He isn't sure how to ask for anything he needs. How to not lash out when he wants them to be quiet, how to shut them out just enough, to distance himself just enough so that he won't hurt them by accident, but he could still stay with them.

To be what they wanted him to be, what he wanted to be.

To not allow them to be collateral damage of his desire to exist, to live and destroy and hurt the people who had created him.

The people who had hurt them.

Of which he was now suddenly one.

It was a bitter pill to swallow.

He used his power to hold Ken still as Chikusa dug the bullet free of his side. Ordered him to stay put, his voice firm even though his heart was still lodged in his throat.

They argued amongst themselves as Mukuro continued to silently have what felt like a low-grade nervous breakdown. He hadn't meant to possess Ken like that. He hadn't meant to possess her either. Hadn't meant to hurt them, but he _had_. He just… he just had to be more careful in the future. They were his and, if he wanted to keep them, then he had to be much more careful, they were fragile and special and not… not meant to be broken.

He could do this. He _could_.

"You both shut up or I'll make you shut up." Mukuro spat, giving them both a shove down the hall back the way they'd come. "There's no reason to stay here now. Let's find Ken's cartridges and get out of here."

All he wanted was to get the hell out of that basement, away from this spot that stank of death and guilt.

**-ooo-  
**THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 1117  
ESTERNEO  
SPAIN  
June 5, 2000

**SALVATORE**

It had been easy enough to build a safe space to hide in while he was distracted. At first he'd been so afraid. Afraid that the monster that had taken his body from him would realize that he was still alive, still present, still a vital part of him, that he would come for him and snuff him out like he had that woman that first day, but he never did. He never came looking and over the years his hiding place became the well down which Mukuro Rokudou poured all the terrible things he couldn't live with and couldn't rid himself of. The knowledge he didn't want, the memories he needed to seal away within himself so that he wouldn't need to face them every day. All those dark and terrible, wriggling things that he still needed, all the things he feared (and he feared so many, many things), they all went down the well and what was originally a way to cope, a method of ensuring the survival of those he valued, slowly became a crutch. It had become a blind spot, a _weakness_, something Salvatore could use.

Time was such a strange, creeping thing when you were waiting, drifting alone in the dark. Minutes were like hours, days like seconds, hours like an eternity and everything was muddled and mixed together and he caught only the rarest glimpses at first of what was happening in the world outside his cage as the gaps between them widened and Mukuro Rokudou grew up and he stayed just the same. Still just a child hiding in the dark peering out to see snatches of how the world had changed- was changing- around him while he was stuck in that little room. He lived unchanging and untouched in that darkness with all those secret fears for years. He wasn't even sure in the end what had changed, what it was that finally gave him the courage to stand up and fling the door of his room open that day so that he might peer outside himself to find a world he barely recognized.

Only that when he did he found it to be a bright and terrible place.

He saw the big man who had come to stay with them at some point driving them all down a long and winding road to a new destination. Saw those traitors in the backseat and how happy they looked just sitting together in the back of that vehicle as it cruised down the highway through a warm, summer afternoon. Chikusa, wearing a ridiculously heavy knitted cap despite the heat of the day, was sitting ramrod straight in his seat paging through a tattered paperback, reading aloud so softly that he could only just barely be heard over the soft static-filled music that murmured from hidden speakers and the roar of the road that pouring in through the open windows. Ken was sprawled across the rest of the seat, sneakered feet propped against the driver's side door, his head propped against Chikusa's thigh as he ate dried meat from a plastic package on the floor and flicked the big man two fingers when he suggested that he '_sit the hell up and put a goddamn seatbelt on, for fuck's sake_'.

He heard Mukuro Rokudou laugh, masking the sound by turning towards his window, folding his arms across the door and leaning his head against them. The voice was like his own had been, a little lower now maybe, but that was hardly the only difference. There was a quality of bitterness to Mukuro's voice that colored the tones and made them his own. He was enjoying the feel of the wind in his face, the way it caught his hair and sent it whipping out behind him as they raced down the road toward their destination. His gaze caught briefly on the rearview mirror and lingered there for a moment.

How peaceful Mukuro Rokudou's expression had seemed in that moment, so at odds with the tumultuous flood of emotion that often rioted within him.

He adjusted his own worldview to compensate for the passage of time feeling vaguely ill. His body was so much older than it had been. So much more time had passed than he had ever imagined while he'd been sitting alone in the dark. It had been years rather than weeks or months. He was taller now, broader. His hair was longer, his features sharper, the scar around his gifted eye was old and faded. He barely even recognized himself anymore. It had been years since he had been himself, since Mukuro Rokudou had stolen his life and his family, since he had been anything more than just a ghost in the machine.

He couldn't… he couldn't allow this to continue. He couldn't just keep hiding away and waiting to be saved or wiped out for good. If he wanted his body, his life, his family back than he was going to need to act. Enough time had passed that it became easier to move forward unseen and observe, to begin experimenting, poking at the seams, examining all those secrets and emotions, discover all his weak points and blind spots while Mukuro Rokudou was distracted with other things.

It didn't take him long to figure out that he could make good use of all those terrible things, those awful moments and memories that Mukuro had shoved down the well, that he could make efficient use of those many lives that lived within them by piercing the thin membranes that Mukuro had constructed to keep all their memories and fears and wants from overwhelming and interfering with his own. That if he were cautious, if he were careful, he could use all those things to trap him, to trip him up, to block him in and Mukuro would never realize that he wasn't doing it to himself. That it wasn't just coincidence or happenstance. It would be easy. He'd been afraid for so long, afraid of him, but in living in the dark with Mukuro's fears and hate he finally realized that Mukuro wasn't _just_ a monster.

He was also a child- just like him- and just like him, Mukuro Rokudou could be led and tricked and pushed aside and- if he were very good or very lucky- possibly even destroyed.

**-ooo-  
**THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 1072  
THE GANG  
SPAIN  
July 20, 2000

**MUKURO**

Mukuro woke up with a scream in his throat, clapping his hands over his mouth to keep the sound from reaching open air.

He could still feel those hands around his throat, warm and huge and sweaty as they squeezed tight and painful and-

"You okay there, short stack?" Lancia's voice startled him and he glanced up to find him staring at him with eyes that glittered, cool and uninviting in the darkness.

"Fine," Mukuro choked on the word, trembling hands still lingering in front of his mouth to muffle the word. His throat was dry and dreadfully painful as if he'd swallowed broken glass. He hadn't even realized he'd fallen asleep and he wasn't… he wasn't sure what he'd been dreaming of that made his heart thud painfully in his chest, made his hands tremble as he pressed them against his knees. Surely not just _that_, that hardly mattered anymore. He'd been dreaming of it for so long, during those increasingly rare moments when he dreamed his own dreams, that it had lost the power to frighten him ages ago.

So what had it been then…?

He felt something cool and smooth press against his head and he jumped, almost yelping but not quite, batting at it frantically for a moment before he realized it was just a soda. Lancia stood over him, holding the bottle against his forehead, his lips twisted with a wry smile. He snatched it away from him irritably as Lancia chuckled, "Sorry, kid, it's all we've got unless you want to start up the coffee maker or drink that shitty tap water."

"It's fine," Mukuro muttered, cracking the bottle open and sipping at the bittersweet, syrupy beverage. It was one of Chikusa's Chinottos, and thus gross, but it soothed his throat a little at least.

"You look like someone walked over your grave. Wanna talk about it?"

"Are you trying to convince me that you care about my problems, Mr. Lancia?"

"Nah, just making conversation," Lancia replied, settling down on the floor beside him with a half full bottle of beer in his hand. "Since we're both awake and all."

Mukuro made a soft noncommittal noise, "I don't want to talk."

"That's fine too," Lancia sighed, digging into his pocket and pulling out a deck of cards, tossing it carelessly down on the floor between them. "Briscola?"

Mukuro felt a smile tug at his lips as he took a sip from his bottle and set it aside, "You know you'll lose."

"Only because you cheat all the fucking time, brat," Lancia replied, flicking the box open and shaking the cards out into his hand.

**-ooo-  
**THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 155  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 23, 2003

**M.M**

If someone had told her six months ago she'd be lying in bed voluntarily with a half-naked boy she'd have laughed in their damn face. She'd have laughed and laughed and laughed and then probably punched them just to make it clear how much she appreciated jokes about her sexuality.

And yet, against all odds, here she was.

He'd started to wake up a little after they'd hauled Lancia away, but not much. By the time, they'd taken Chikusa and Lancia (and even Birds who'd started screaming bloody murder not long before the entire prison heard the unholy screech of metal that she imagined was probably Lancia destroying their bunks) away she'd already searched Ken and come up with the cartridge, slipping it into her own pocket for safekeeping.

"M?" He mumbled, unwilling or unable to open his eyes. It didn't really surprise her that he knew it was her without having to see her. He complained a lot about the scent of her perfume though she supposed that probably wouldn't be an issue for him in future since her perfume had probably met the same fate as everything else in their cell.

"Hey, mutt," she murmured, brushing flecks of blood from his cheek.

He was silent so long that she thought maybe he'd fallen back to sleep again. He curled in on himself a little, pulling his knees up to his chest and whimpering which was probably the most pathetic sound she'd ever heard in her life. She sighed, brushing a restless hand over his shoulder, unsure what to do or how to help or even if she wanted to help.

Six months ago she had been alone and now… and now the thought of being alone again was… unsettling. She'd never really had close friends growing up, not even at school. The best she'd had were acquaintances and sometimes uneasy alliances and that had been enough, more than enough. She'd never really wanted anything more than that until she met Bee and after… the idea of getting close to someone again like that. It wasn't something she needed or wanted. She had Bee and that was enough. She had done what she had to do to preserve that one tenuous connection. She didn't need any others. She'd kept herself to herself and gone through the motions.

Then there was their silly little romance.

And it _was_ silly.

The way they danced around the inevitability of each other. And Ken had been… fun to tease. His flushed cheeks and embarrassment and utter lack of guile had been refreshing and for the first time in a long time she'd been interested in something besides surviving and making enough money to get by. And with Ken had come Mukuro, her mysterious benefactor who (from the brief glimpse she'd had of him all those months ago) looked like a child no older than she was, but talked like a geezer and gave her everything she needed for the price of her loyalty.

She didn't pretend to understand that.

She was glad enough though that it gave her a convenient excuse. It wasn't that she wanted friends, obviously, but Ken had grown on her and for all that Chikusa hadn't, she certainly didn't hate him and, more than that, she didn't want Ken to end up like her. Bitter and lonely and mourning all the things he'd had and, more than that, all the things he hadn't, unable to move on beyond the loss of what might have been.

"He'll be okay," she murmured, brushing a hand over the still damp hat and hoping it wasn't a lie.

"Malone, get up."

It was funny how easy it was to forget that despite the incompetence that led to people being poisoned and injured left, right and center that this was still a prison. She glanced up to meet the gaze of the guard standing over her for a brief moment before his stare relocated to the vicinity of her shoulder. She wondered vaguely what he'd seen in her face that made him so uncomfortable.

"I said, get up, Prisoner WXR71007."

M.M. blew out a slow even breath and gently shifted Ken off her lap and laid his hand on the floor. It wasn't actually terribly easy to be gentle with him. He weighed a ton and she hadn't exactly made a habit of hitting the weights since she'd been in Traditore. She'd always relied more on speed than strength after all and her enemies here were few. She stood slowly, her knees and legs protesting after so long spent kneeling on the concrete floor, pins and needles spiking through the leg she'd been balancing Ken's head on. She really had no idea how much time had passed at all. Long enough for them to clear all the other prisoners back to their cells, not long enough to have bothered to removing the body of the man who'd attacked Chikusa or clear up the puddle of blood Chikusa had left behind.

Priority to the living, she supposed.

"You're to return to your cell."

She raised an eyebrow, glancing over at the cell which still had the bunks bent and locked in place across the bars, "_Seriously?_"

The guard flushed, but she couldn't tell if it was anger or embarrassment as he answered tersely, "Your new cell. Level 2, cell 5."

"And what about him?"

"Prisoner SB8461 will be checked over by the nurse and, assuming he doesn't need to go to the infirmary, he'll be returned to his cell after he's been decontaminated."

Dammit.

"Let me take the hat, please."

"It needs to be…"

"Do you really care?" She asked tiredly, "Honestly? Do they pay you enough to care about something like that? He's sick and his best friend is dying, could you please just let him have the goddamn _hat_."

The guard frowned and glanced around as if to make sure no one else was watching, "Fine. Take it, hurry up."

M.M. nodded and bent down, snatching the hat and wincing as Ken whimpered again and hugged his knees more tightly to his chest. She pressed a hand against his cheek, marveling at how hot his skin felt, like the blood was boiling beneath the surface. She shoved the cap in her pocket and stood back up quickly, stepping back. "Thanks," she murmured and she knew it sounded insincere, but she couldn't summon the urge to care.

The guard shrugged, "Back to your cell."

**-ooo-**

They dragged him back into their new cell an hour later. Not quite literally, but it looked like it was a close thing as it took two guards to carry him and they were sweating and cursing and stumbling like they were trying to move a walrus rather than a teenage boy. It gave her a new appreciation for the way Chikusa had made supporting his weight look so strangely effortless when they'd stumbled away to the bathroom that last time. She hadn't thought anything of it at the time.

They ended up dropping him unceremoniously on his bunk and stumbling back, cursing and whining about how heavy he was and how much their backs hurt from hauling him around.

_Pussies._

Ken was dressed in fresh clothes, some spare prison uniform twice his size from the look of it. It was twisted and bunched up awkwardly, the pants rolled up a dozen times at the ankle so it looked so the cloth was thick and banded around his calf like a donut. It looked ridiculous and the pants were still falling down. At least they'd apparently found boxers that were the right size judging from what she could see peeking out between the enormous shirt and the sagging pants. On the up side, all the clothing malfunctions probably meant he'd been out of it all this time and they'd tugged them onto his unconscious body. At least he'd probably been out of it for the shower too. Like he needed something else to mess him up today. His feet were bare and his sopping wet hair had left drips and drabs of water all over the floor when they brought him in as his head and lolled and bounced about with each jagged, staggering step they'd taken.

M.M. glared at them from where she'd been sitting on her bunk waiting for them to bring him back. "Real nice, assholes. You could have at least brought a goddamn towel so I dry his hair if you weren't going to bother. He's sick and it's fucking freezing in here."

"Use a blanket, you've got an extra now," the guard she'd always thought of as Snide McFuckhead commented, smirking at her between great heaving breaths, his hands planted firmly on his hips.

She flipped him two fingers.

"I heard he's probably gonna die, you know." Snide McFuckhead replied viciously. "The other one. Went into shock or something before they even got him in the operating room."

"Go to hell," she snapped, stomping across the room towards Ken. Last thing he needed was to wake up and hear that bullshit.

Even if it was probably true.

She'd seen enough gut wounds over the years to know what a killing blow looked like and those lazy bastards from the infirmary had been so slow in getting there. It made her want to scream, for all the good it would do.

She was pretty sure that Snide McFuckhead would have given her a rap with his stick for that last if the other guard hadn't been there to stop him, but for the first in a long time she kind of wished he would. She almost wanted a fight. Wanted a reason, an excuse to punch him in his smug asshole face. Hell, she just really, really wanted to punch someone period. But the other guard was there and he caught Snide McFuckhead by the arm and steered him back out of the room as she dragged the shitty, scratchy blanket off the top bunk to dry Ken's hair with rough, angry movements. Thoughtful of them to provide the extra set of bedding when, even if Chikusa did return, it wouldn't be any time soon. At least they'd have an extra blanket for the really chilly nights.

She'd barely gotten the blanket over him and started brushing it over his hair when she found herself looking down into Ken's bleary eyes, dry and bloodshot and unfocused still because of all the drugs probably still swamping his system. "Chikusa?"

His voice was heartbreakingly soft.

"No. Sorry. Just me. He'll be fine though," she whispered, even though she was pretty sure that wasn't true. "He's tough. Mukuro's looking after him, so you should just try to get some rest. You won't be much good to him if you get sicker while he's gone. I'm sure they'll let you see him as soon as he's in recovery."

That was a lie too.

They probably wouldn't.

But he didn't need to know that yet.

It might be a moot point anyway.

Ken nodded, the exhaustion or the chemicals in his system already sucking him back down and under and in moments he was unconscious again. She touched a hand to his forehead and found it still hot to the touch. Frowning at the oversized uniform she decided that he'd probably be better off in just his boxers under the blanket, he'd be able to kick that off if he needed to at least.

Which was a great thought in theory, but tougher to put into practice. A fact that she realized as she pulled and tugged and pried and pushed and shoved and kicked his limp body around to get back out of the damn thing. The pants had been pretty easy though she'd fallen on her ass tugging them off him. The shirt she'd eventually given up as a lost cause, settling for just unbuttoning it in the hopes he'd be able to shrug out of it if he needed to. He was so out of it that he was just dead weight and no amount of encouragement or cajoling or out right shoving could move him. No wonder the guards had been heaving and complaining like a bunch of old men. For such a little guy, Ken was heavy as hell. She took the hat from where she'd set it under his pillow earlier and managed to tug it on his head again and covered him with the spare blanket and called it done.

He slept like the dead for the next few hours as she sat up at the foot of the bed and watched over him. Not that she cared exactly, just… once upon a time someone she'd cared about had been lying out of sight in a hospital bed and she wouldn't have hated having some company while she'd sat in that hospital waiting room besides a bunch of strangers, stale coffee and the pitying glances of the nursing staff.

She didn't have any use for friends, not really, but Ken had been calling her his friend for months so maybe… maybe it would help, to know that she was here, even if it was only a very little bit. Besides it wasn't as if she had anything better to do just now anyway. She wasn't tired and even if she was… she kept seeing Birds expression every damn time she closed her eyes. The way his eyes had fluttered, his nose had bled as Ken had been shouting for help, his hands already covered in blood. Even if he wasn't responsible for this, and she didn't doubt that he almost certainly was, she still kind of wanted to kill him just for enjoying their pain.

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, between first and second bed checks, Ken's sleep had become fitful. He twitched and sometimes sobbed and most often mumbled into the blankets. She didn't have to be able to hear him to know what he was probably saying.

So, she did what she could and dug into the blankets and held his hand because there was no one else around to do it. Just her and him in a cell that seemed too big and too empty without Chikusa's silent, often stoic presence. Without Ken's usual noise pollution snoring, though that had been a rarity over the last few weeks as he slept less and less frequently.

They'd only been there for six months and she'd already gotten used to them. They'd already gotten under her skin as if they'd just always been there. She'd made all these rules and promises to herself and a couple months were some stupid boys and she was already breaking those rules left and right, getting involved with them even when there wasn't much to be had in the way of benefit. She wanted to look after him and not because Mukuro had asked it of her, he hadn't had to. She probably could have gotten away with billing him for it, of course, but at the end of the day she didn't mind doing it for free. They might never be her friends, she wasn't up for that and she wasn't sure she ever would be, but perhaps she didn't mind so much being theirs. Even if it were only for the short time they shared between within these prison walls.

Her thoughts just kept chasing themselves around and around, greyhounds chasing a rabbit around a track into eternity, just the same scenery passing by again and again. There was nothing new to be had by thinking too deeply about it.

She had stayed on that bed with him while he had his nightmares and had given the on-duty guard a look that dared him to say anything about it when he'd come by the cell to shine his light in on his rounds (which had been so frequent that night as to border on insulting). Surprisingly, the guard had just held up his hands each time he came around and left her to it. Maybe out of sympathy, maybe just out of the laziness of wanting to avoid the fight at half-past fuck off o'clock in the morning. It hardly mattered one way or the other. All that really mattered to her was the boy clutching her hand and the boy fighting for his life in the infirmary and how much she wanted them both to be okay and how much she hated that she genuinely cared about what happened to them.

**-ooo-  
MUKURO/LANCIA**

He found Lancia in his old cell downstairs.

Touching Lancia's mind was like touching a live wire, charged and painful. The sensation faded after a moment, but it told him as clearly as the exhaustion that hung heavy around the edges of Lancia's mind that they were nearing the end of their road. It wasn't as if he hadn't known that it was coming, he'd known from the moment he'd found out that Lancia had missed an opportunity to free himself from the burden of them once and for all that it was just a matter of time before he would have to cut ties.

"Hey kid," Lancia murmured, soft and unsurprised as if he'd been waiting for him and would have continued to wait for him for hours, days, forever. He spoke aloud, sitting up on the edge of the bed, chains jangling as he moved, dropping his arms to rest across his knees. "How's Chikusa?"

"He's… okay," Mukuro replied quietly, taking his cue from Lancia and doing so aloud for once. He was almost grateful for it. It allowed them the illusion of distance and distance was something he sorely needed just now, still raw and aching from Chikusa's… injury. "Stable."

"I figured. You wouldn't be here if he wasn't."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Good. That's… good. How long is he gonna be laid up?"

"I don't know. A long time, six weeks, maybe less, maybe more."

"That is a long time. You'll stay with him, right? I figure you shouldn't have a problem doing that since they think you're in a fucking coma or something right now. How's Ken doing?"

With every subsequent question, he felt tension sizzle up their spine, tension tying their stomach in knots. It was like waiting for an ax to fall. He tapped their foot irritably, impatient. "Yes, I plan to stay in the infirmary for the duration. And Ken's still out. I'll check on him again later."

"Good. Make sure he gets some real rest, right? He looked like hell when I saw him."

"_Obviously_," Mukuro choked the word out through gritted teeth. "I don't need you to tell me that."

"That's great. It's nice to know if you're gonna make a fucking mess of them that you're at least willing to help clean it up."

"Mr. Lancia…" Mukuro began, a note of warning in their tone, fingers digging into their knees.

"You almost got them fucking killed, Mukuro. You almost got all of us killed because you couldn't be fucking bothered to be honest."

"I've very rarely lied to you, Mr. Lancia," Mukuro hissed, holding onto his temper, keeping from lashing out by only the barest of margins. This give and take, this alternating control was exhausting.

"Yeah, but you I both fucking know there really isn't much fucking difference at all between lying and just leaving shit out." Lancia spat, his fear and rage like a thunderstorm breaking and crackling to life all around them. "If you'd been one fucking day later coming back Chikusa would be dead. You do understand that, don't you? Chikusa would be dead and if you think Ken would actually survive that, you're fucking kidding yourself. If you think _you_ would survive that, you're kidding yourself. You can spin it any way you want, but…"

"_Don't._"

"Losing them would fucking _destroy_ you."

He left those words alone, afraid to touch them, to even _think_ about them for too long, what they meant.

"You think I meant for this to happen. You think I _wanted_ this," he accused instead, because it was easier to go on the offensive.

"Oh, fuck off, you know better than that. I just don't think you did much of anything to stop it happening, you couldn't, not while you're willing to just let your past run your life."

"You don't even know what you're talking about," Mukuro snarled in reply. "You don't know anything about it."

"Yeah, kid, because I don't know a single fucking thing about what it's like to let the people who ruined your life run your life."

Mukuro laughed, soft and bitter, "We're doing this now?"

Lancia sighed and ran a hand through their hair, ruffling it the way he used to do to him when they first met before everything that came after. And he couldn't feel it, not really, but it still made him _ache_. "No, kid, not now, not today. Today I'm the one who owes you an apology, because I should have fucking called you out on this shit before it got this bad. I mean, hell, we're as much to blame for what happened today as you are. But at least they've got a fucking excuse. You're the leader, you're the boss, they take their cues from you and you've all still got one foot stuck in whatever hell you came from. They probably don't even realize how bad you've gotten, because they think all the shit you've been doing is just about them. Hell, maybe they're even blaming themselves for it, I don't fucking know, but this has gotta stop."

He should leave.

He should go.

He should run away from this... _this_... _whatever_ it was, because it wasn't… he wasn't... he was still too raw, his control too weak and frayed by all that had happened for this to end well.

He should _go_.

Instead he lingered, stuck fast by some emotion that clawed at his throat, begging for release.

He'd never been very good at leaving Lancia behind.

"Listen, kid, you're gonna make mistakes. Sometimes you're gonna hurt the people you love, sometimes they're gonna hurt you. That's just life. And I don't pretend to know why you do the shit you do or why you are the way you are, but you've been walling yourself off for years and you can't keep doing this."

He couldn't…

This wasn't….

"I don't know what you think you know…." He began slowly, cautiously.

Lancia snorted, leaning back against the wall behind them tiredly, "It's not exactly a subtle point you've been making. At some point you must have got this idea stuck in your head that you weren't safe. Maybe it was in Spain or New York or India, fuck, I don't know, maybe it was before I even met you. Whenever it happened, it's been there just gnawing away at you ever since. This _stupid_ fucking idea that they, that _we_, aren't safe around you, and every time something terrible happens it makes everything fucking worse. _You_ make everything worse. You cut yourself off just a little more, you tell us a little less, you try harder to control every variable, plan for everything that could go wrong, and it wreaks you just that much worse when shit inevitably goes south.

"You're better than you think you are, Mukuro. You're a murderous little bastard, no fucking doubt about that, but you're still… you do the best you can by them… by _us_. You fail pretty damn spectacularly at it sometimes, but you _try_. Today… today was a bad day. We're gonna have bad days, but we'll have less of them if we all stop acting like we aren't in this together, that we can't fucking trust each other with the truth. You've gotta stop treating us like we're just along for the fucking ride and let us help you. If you aren't willing to do that, then what the fuck is the point of even keeping us around? If you want walking cannon fodder, go find yourself some minions you couldn't give a fuck less about. At least then it wouldn't tear you up inside when something happened to them."

"Why do you think I brought you along with us, Mr. Lancia?" Mukuro replied, his voice whisper soft and Lancia felt it sink bone deep, slicing straight into the heart of him. "What did you think your part in this was all this time? Did you think I was Peter Pan in search of a mother for my lost boys? Did you think I was keeping you around because I so enjoy our little talks? You were meant to be that cannon fodder. You were meant to protect them, to keep them safe from all comers. _Including me_. That was what you were meant to do and you've failed rather _spectacularly_ at that so what, exactly, is the point of _you_, Mr. Lancia? What is the point of keeping you around? Can you tell me? Because I'm having some difficulty figuring out why I shouldn't just kill you now and be done with it."

"Mukuro…"

Mukuro shook their head briefly before he withdrew, settling into the back of his mind like a coiled snake, every word a strike releasing poison in the shallow wounds it left behind. _No, Mr. Lancia, no. It's far too late for take backs and regrets now. After all, you've made some rather good points. I've been thinking about this all wrong. I was so worried about keeping them safe, about the idea that I might lash out and hurt them again that I've shaved off all my edges, blunted myself in some desperate attempt to be something I am not. Pathetic, really. Not to mention completely ineffective. If you tear out a cat's teeth and claws, it cannot harm you, but neither can it defend itself by rending the flesh of those who would prey upon it. I have become complacent, my standards lax. I have forgotten what it was I was truly meant to do. I've been so laughably concerned with keeping them safe that I forgot that the only way to truly do that is to remove the threat at its source, to tear the strangling vine of the mafia out by the root._

_Thank you, Mr. Lancia, for reminding me. You have been most helpful in making me see what is needed, what I have to do. It's high past time I make my peace with what I am._

_Enjoy your stay here, Mr. Lancia. Solitary confinement will give you ample time to reflect upon your many failings._

_Let's chat again when you're released._

If_ you're released._

And just like that he was gone.

Lancia put his face in his hands and laughed roughly.

So _stupid_. Really, what the hell had he expected to happen? Had he really thought he'd be able to talk sense to him? What the fuck did he even really know about it? He'd been living with those fucking kids for the better part of five years and he still didn't really know much of anything about them. Sometimes he forgot that just because he'd started caring too much about them at some point it didn't mean the feeling was mutual.

Sometimes he thought Mukuro wanted them to hate him.

Hell, maybe he even needed them to.

He could understand that. Being hated was probably easier.

**-ooo-  
THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 693  
ESTERNEO  
NEW YORK  
August 3, 2001

**SALVATORE**

It was easy to trick him, trap him, in a hell of his own making.

The thing about Mukuro, he had realized from pawing through his lives and memories and all the things he chose not to think about from day to day was that there were simply some things Mukuro couldn't deal with properly.

Violence was easy for him, there was enough hate and rage and pain wrapped up in such acts that he found them almost cathartic.

Intimacy, on the other hand, was difficult for him. Softer emotions, love and kindness and all the physical acts that flowed from such emotions made him uncomfortable at best and at worst almost repulsed him because they weren't things he instinctively understood. None of the souls that made him had had an easy relationship with such intimacies and while the traitors helped with that, he was so petrified of hurting them again that he imposed distance. The man from Cacciatore was the same, he'd lashed out at him, allowed the urge to save him to get twisted up in his desire to protect himself and he used that man to slaughter his entire family to ensure he'd never care for him even while he'd never be able to let him go.

Mukuro when determined, when set upon his path, was an unstoppable force, but Mukuro when outside his comfort zone was… a child.

Still just a child.

Just like him.

He giggled a little at the thought of Mukuro Rokudou trapped and unable to escape such things and knew it was the perfect trap in part because of the inevitability that such an opportunity would present itself. All he'd had to do was wait and seize the moment when it arose, shoving him out and locking the door behind him and Mukuro, for all his power, would be too scattered and afraid and panicked to be capable of gathering himself enough to storm back inside. It wasn't a permanent solution, obviously, as it wouldn't last and likely wouldn't work a second time, but this time. This one time it had worked just fine and the body was his again even if it would only be for an hour or two.

Strange how it no longer really felt like his own, too tall now, stretched thin as if it had formed itself around the essence of Mukuro, taking on a shape that most suited him, lean and mean. He pushed himself to his feet cautiously and walked forward on unsteady legs to the window, yanking the curtains open so that he could see the city beyond, washed in warm afternoon light.

It was beautiful.

Dirty and flawed and perfect and, for this brief moment, his alone.

He stripped off the clothes he wore, those strange tattered casual rags that Mukuro adored. Clothing so different from the dress shirts and slacks he'd grown up in. They felt unnatural, disgusting, like the body itself, just another aspect of Mukuro. Just another thing he had stolen from him. He stood for another moment enjoying the feel of the light on his bare skin, slid his hands briefly over the smooth expanse as he sighed. It felt nice. He could get used to this.

Stretching, Salvatore turned on his heel and strode off to the bathroom, steadier and with greater surety with each step he took. He was settling in, reminding this body to which master it truly owed allegiance, in whose shape it should truly be. He flicked the light on in the bathroom, mildly annoyed when it flickered pathetically for a few moments before finely catching and brightening with a soft buzzing noise. Irritating. Why didn't they have that fixed?

He stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror for a long time examining the changes the years and Mukuro's possession had made to it, the new scars and the play of muscle in long limbs, how some things had rounded and others had sharpened and how he'd just gotten… _bigger, older, stronger_. It was both gratifying and disturbing.

Afterwards, he searched through the closets in the apartment, finally finding a dress shirt, far too long and presumably belonging to the man from Cacciatore, but he put it on anyway and buttoned it up and immediately felt better, the body truly his own once more. He glanced at the clock ticking away on the wall and found he was running out of time. He'd managed to glean enough information in the moments he'd been involved in the possession to know that that couple's trysts lasted an average of two hours which meant, conservatively, that he had about an hour and a half before Mukuro might be able to free himself and return.

No more time for dilly-dallying.

He slipped back into Mukuro's worn jeans and sat down against the wall.

It wasn't as difficult as he'd thought it would be to find him. He'd known he would be here. He'd known he would be with them, it was part of the reason he'd chosen New York when he'd decided to feed Mukuro a destination. This was the point of all his hard work, after all. That he should be able to retake his body and go home again. He was so glad that Father had continued his experiments here in this place, it made it a far more simple matter to reach out, to tune his soul to that frequency and follow it down the line to the closest person, boy, marked for possession and slip into his body. The boy was young, only nine or so, but eager to please his father's friend who had dragged the knife across his skin and promised it would make him special.

Salvatore laughed, pressed the boy to the side with ease, he was weak and hardly even worth thinking about. He knew the boy would probably have nightmares for weeks about his laugh, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. Children who played at being illusionists needed to be tougher than that if they meant to continue.

He blinked open his borrowed eyes and scanned the large balcony. He was at some sort of adult party, populated with rich strangers in dark suits and fancy dresses. Still, even with the crowd, it didn't take him long to find him. And, of course, he recognized him immediately. His father was a little older and a little grayer, but still his father all the same. He smiled brilliantly, thrilled at the sight. "Father!" He called, raising his hand in greeting without thinking.

His father stared at him in shock for so long that he began to fidget wondering if he'd done the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, until finally a smile curled his lips as he looked down at him. "Salvatore, my son," he murmured, hesitant, but sure. "I'm so very glad you survived. Does this mean you have retaken your body?"

Now he really did fidget, "I-I did. Not permanently, just… just temporarily, but I brought him here to New York and…."

His father's eyes blazed with something that might have been fury and his next words were said slow and measured, "You brought Mukuro Rokudou to my doorstep. On purpose."

"I-I just…" he grasped for a response, an excuse, but came up empty. He'd thought his father would be pleased. He'd thought he would be happy and, most of all, he'd just wanted to come home even if it was only for a very little while. "I just wanted…."

Father snatched his arm in a firm grip, dragging him across the balcony and into the apartment beyond, through a crowded living room and down a long hall until he reached an empty bedroom. He shoved him inside, slamming the door after them before turning back to him and giving him a firm shake. "Did you imagine I did not know where you were, you stupid child? That I am incapable of keeping tabs on my belongings? Everywhere he goes Mukuro Rokudou leaves a trail of bodies and blood in his wake. It is _nothing_ to keep track of him and the other boys who follow him around and heel and sit like well-trained pups. I could have them any time I wished. Certainly, the addition of Lancia of Cacciatore to that little group was an unwelcome surprise, but not an insurmountable problem by any means. They roam free because I have allowed it, because I have no wish to capture them at this particular moment in time. They are an important factor in my plans, certainly, but not as they are. They are _useless_ to me as they are. Now, tell me you have at least brought me some information of interest to make up for your incompetence."

"I…" His mind was a blank and he couldn't think of anything past his panic that he had spoiled his father's plans, that he was angry with him. He'd longed to return and he'd waited and he'd worked so hard and _nothing_ was going the way he thought it would. He'd thought he would be _pleased_. But he _wasn't_. Nothing had gone according to plan and his father… his father _still_ liked _him_ best. "H-h-he cheated!"

"Excuse me?" Father replied, his eyes narrowed.

"H-he's l-l-like…" he trailed off, not quite certain how to explain it. He tried again, because Father needed to know that Mukuro wasn't… wasn't _that_ powerful. That it wasn't his fault that Mukuro had been stronger, that it wasn't just because he was powerful that he had been able to toss him aside and take his body from him as if it were nothing. "He uses those t-traitors like-like… _anchors_. That's how he stabilizes himself. That's how he was able t-to steal my body from me like he did."

"Fascinating," his father murmured, looking thoughtful, the rage of moments ago now merely an unsettling memory as Salvatore breathed a quiet sigh of relief. "So, Mukuro isn't a manifestation of a separate personality, he is actually an entirely separate entity?"

"Y-yes," Salvatore answered, relieved that his father seemed pleased with his words. "He's just… he's just a _monster_."

"Is he?" Father replied, releasing him and leaning back against the bedroom wall, lost in thought. "That would certainly explain the failure of subsequent experiments. I had assumed you had some sort of dissociative episode as a result of the initial death and triggering a similar event in subsequent candidates was unlikely but not impossible, but if what you're saying were to prove true. Hm. This _is_ disappointing."

"W-what do you mean?"

"Simply that the success of Mukuro Rokudou can never be duplicated. He is unique. We can foster the compatibility with the bullets in others once we've managed to reengineer them, but the soul project isn't a viable method of doing so. I suppose we'll just need to focus our attentions elsewhere. Tell me, Salvatore. He hasn't destroyed the bullets, has he? He still has them?"

"I, yes, of course, Father, I… um…" Salvatore managed still not quite sure what to make of his father's words. Surely he wasn't… wasn't suggesting that… "He hid them, but…."

"Do you know where?"

"I-" he couldn't lie to his father, but… but… he was so interested in _Mukuro_. As if… almost as if Mukuro were more interesting to him still. Even knowing that he was a cheat, a monster. As if, knowing what Mukuro actually was had made him even _more_ interesting, _more_ valuable… _more_ than he had ever been. It couldn't be true, but… it still made him edgy and uncertain. "I-I should go. He'll be returning soon and I… I…"

"Of course," his father answered, a kind smile curving his lips that eased some of his anxiety and worry swamping him though not all. "It wouldn't do for him to realize something was amiss quite yet. You'll have a far more difficult time taking your body back if he sees you coming. He truly is quite something this Mukuro Rokudou. I look forward to hearing later how you managed to best him long enough to seek me out. I'm sure it's a fascinating story."

"Yes, Father," the boy almost hissed the response as he took his leave, abandoning that child's body for his own with the ease of long practice. He'd always found it easier to return than it had ever been to go in the first place. It had been years, but it was no different than riding a bike. He awoke in his own body once more and stood, irritated. Perhaps he should do something to it, to mark the fact that he was here that this body was still his.

_Something._

How he loathed him, this parasite that was somehow more adept at wielding his body than he had ever been. This monster that was everything he longed to be. Powerful and self-assured and in control…

Only he wasn't, was he?

Father had said he could take back his body, hadn't he? _Hadn't he?_ Father believed in him and if Father believed he could do it, it must be so. It had been easy enough to influence him in the prison, to incite his fears and wear at the boundaries that kept the memories of all those other lives at bay. Even today, it had only taken a bit of forethought and timing and he'd managed to trap Mukuro Rokudou in a Hell of his own making. If he had done it once, he could do it again. Trip him up, trap him, wear him down, play up his fears, force him to isolate himself and gradually take him apart piece by piece until it wouldn't matter how strong he was, all that would matter was that he was better and that he had the element of surprise.

If he could just break the ties that bound him to those three, he thought he'd at least stand a chance. He slipped back into the space he had created for himself. His cozy bedroom, just like the one he had at home down to the smallest detail, nestled down in the depths of the well Mukuro thought he had created for himself. That well-formed place where he put all the things about himself he felt were too dangerous or too distasteful; the most deadly urges, the darkest thoughts and the most overwhelming fears. All the things he could not accept. It made Mukuro weak, vulnerable though he thought it made him safer, less likely to hurt them, more human and more in control most of all. All of which suited Salvatore just fine. Let Mukuro Rokudou continue to believe he was the Master of his own domain for now, so convinced of his own superiority that he could never see the truth staring him straight in the face, never feel the eyes watching him from the dark.

He felt it when Mukuro returned moments later, a crumpled mass of agony and fear and self-loathing as he curled in around himself, shaking and ashamed of the arousal that followed him home, unwanted and unbidden. Mukuro's pain tasted like victory even as it made him a little queasy as well.

That was his body too after all.

**-ooo-  
THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 693  
THE GANG  
NEW YORK  
August 3, 2001

**MUKURO**

How had that happened? _How_ had he miscalculated so badly? He'd just… it was just supposed to be… just…

A sob broke from his lips as he willed his body to stop being… to not… _react_ any further to those sounds and images that had followed him home though he'd tried so hard not to look or see or hear or feel anything from those cascading memories.

He tried so _hard_.

The sudden laughter that escaped his lips was hysterical, loud and hissing and bitter and painful.

He'd been so careful to avoid such things in the past, but this time… this time something had been different. He hadn't been able to escape, to come home, and so he'd been… _stuck_. Not quite in his body and not quite out. He knew what was happening, he wasn't _ignorant_. It wasn't as if he'd never seen that sort of thing before. He'd seen plenty of movies and television and people thought up all sorts of revolting things all the time and plenty of those were sexual in nature. In fact, most people seemed to think about sex quite frequently, sometimes just in passing and other times in truly nauseating detail and while he found it irritating and unsettling, it had never bothered him overly. It was… embarrassing, but relatively harmless. This though…

That loss of control, drowning in those unwanted emotions had been… too much. Everything had been so… unfamiliar and strange, like a thousand people speaking in a thousand tongues shouting at him from every direction, stroking memories from all those other lives to life, giving them a power they never usually had. It had been overwhelming and he hadn't been able to stop it or rein those memories in or shove them away or lock them down, as he usually would have done. He could only live them, again and again, spiraling faster and faster and he thought he was screaming but it was impossible to tell.

When he'd finally tumbled back into his own body as the worst passed and the memories finally began to obey his frantic pleas and he was himself again, quivering with a traitorous body that was only too interested in the flurry of images and feelings that had bombarded him in the… had it been minutes? Hours? He wasn't sure. The quality of light filtering through the windows had changed so time had passed, but how much…? He pushed himself up onto trembling, uncertain limbs, feeling not unlike a baby fawn trying to take his first uncertain steps. The inside of his jeans were damp, uncomfortable and rubbed scratchy, rough and painful against his skin as he shifted.

His skin?

That wasn't… that wasn't right, was it?

Why wasn't he wearing boxers and why… why was he wearing someone else's shirt?

_What the hell was happening?_

He was hyperventilating, panicked and shaken and shuddering. This wasn't what it seemed like.

It couldn't be.

_Couldn't be._

He was himself. He was himself and no one else and this was his body and he wasn't… he wasn't any of _them_; he was just the sum of those parts. They weren't people, just memories, just echoes of what had been, they couldn't… he wasn't… he must have….

He clapped hands over his mouth to keep from screaming.

He realized it was one of Lancia's shirts when the panic finally began to recede enough for reason to peek through again. Once he was finally able to drag his gaze up from the floor to actually look around. The boxers and shirt he'd been wearing earlier were discarded in front of window, the curtains yanked open wide so the blazing sun was casting bright yellow late summer light across the floor. Had that been all he'd done? What else?

_What else?_

It had been like this for months, hadn't it? Since April? May? He wasn't sure. He'd thought he was imagining it at first. Just imagining that he was losing time. Just seconds or a minute here and there as if he'd blinked too long or walked across the room without thinking about it, disconcerting, but not alarming. But this… this was….

The front door was locked and bolted, the alarm set.

He probably hadn't left the apartment.

_Probably._

He felt sick.

Something had been off for _months_, he'd known that, he'd felt eyes on him, watching him more and more often, but it had felt… felt like paranoia. It _still_ did. It wasn't… it wasn't something outside. It was something inside him. Something inside him wasn't _right_. He _knew_ that something wasn't right that he wasn't… that _he_ wasn't right.

And now… now he'd lost control completely even if it was only for a few minutes, an hour. He'd been fine and it had been just another possession, just another day like the last, like all the rest, until he'd been faced with all of… _that_. Emotions, urges he hadn't even had words for. He'd been stunned and then he hadn't been able to… he hadn't been able to return, to leave, to flee. He'd been trapped and he'd panicked and his control had slipped and bent and shattered in the face of all those hateful sensations. He'd lost control and been swamped, trapped by his own memories, all those memories of other lives and it had been… _terrifying_.

And now… and now his body had moved while he was out, unmistakably. Had changed clothes and who the heck knew what else before he'd come spilling back into it, wreaked and exhausted and quaking in the aftermath. He had words for those feelings now. Need and want and pleasure and he hated them all. He coughed, his vision blurring as short nails bent and cracked as he dug them painfully against the concrete floor.

It was done. It was over. Okay. _Okay._ He could deal with… he could deal with this it was just…

He pushed himself up and immediately stumbled his legs weak and he was… he felt… _sticky_ and…

The sound that broke from him then was somewhere between a strangled scream and a sob.

He felt sick and terrible and filthy and he just… he _needed_ to shower. He just needed to… he needed to… he clawed his way out of the shirt, jerking it over his head and balling it up and throwing it at the window. Snatched up the t-shirt that had been discarded there and jerked it over his head. And even with his own shirt on he still didn't feel any better at all, if anything he felt worse. He liked this shirt. It was _his_. It had been someone else's and now it was _his_ and it was worn, well-loved and it had holes where the fabric had worn through that always felt like the conclusion to a dozen different stories he didn't know and the faded logo of some band he'd never heard of and he'd never be able to wear it again because it would always remind him of this.

And he hated the whole damn world.

He wanted to fucking break something, _everything_. Go next door and kill the neighbors who played their music too loud sometimes, the man down the hall with the dog that always growled at him, the woman who lived on the third floor who always looked at him, at them, like she wasn't sure who'd let them in the building and was half tempted to call the cops to come pick them up before they had a chance to bring down property values.

He managed to get two steps from the window before he was on the floor again, uncertain how he'd gotten there, his knees aching enough to annoy which probably meant he'd hit hard enough that they'd be black and blue with bruises in the morning.

It was supposed to be different here, wasn't it? There had to be some reason he'd wanted to come here. Something he'd wanted to accomplish besides taking odd jobs killing low-level mafia idiots and hiding from the Vindice. Some days he thought he'd come here to try just being… something like normal for a little while. And sometimes he thought he'd almost managed to succeed at it. When they went to the market or furniture shopping or when Lancia had instituted movie nights and he processed the audio into tiny illusionary Italian subtitles so Ken could keep up when his English failed him. Making both Ken and Chikusa sit through lessons in math and English and literature and science and all these things that they'd probably never even need. Because they would never be able to live normal lives, to be normal kids and neither would he and he wasn't sure why he even kept trying some days.

And he _was_ trying. He'd been trying for _years_. And it wasn't _working_. Nothing worked right and he needed… he needed to take a shower. Just… clear his head. He needed to clear his head. Everything felt filthy and muddled and his skin _itched_.

He stumbled back to his feet and somehow managed to make it all the way into the bathroom this time. He flicked off the light as he fell back against the door, slamming it shut, because he didn't want to see himself in the mirror across the room. Not that it was truly dark enough to avoid it even with the light off. He didn't bother to lock the door as he pushed off the slick, painted surface, suddenly exhausted.

The pipes rattled as turned on the water in the shower and pulled the knob to turn the shower spray on. It hiccuped and spurted a few times before it began spitting water out of the tiny showerhead in earnest. He didn't bother to undress, just stumbled into the tub and flopped down beneath the spray. He didn't care that it was freezing, he cared even less when it was boiling hot, he could barely feel it either way, but he did at least like the feel of the water pouring down over his face. Even he couldn't tell if he was crying that way. He could just lean against the wall and pretend he didn't exist at all. That he wasn't here, that he wasn't anywhere.

That he was just an ordinary boy who wasn't ready to know what it was like to feel that way.

Didn't know if he ever would be.

Didn't know if he even could.

All those other lives within him were utterly silent for once, leaving him with only his own thoughts and emotions and the fall of water against his skin for company.

He'd never felt so alone.

**END NOTES:** So, as it happens, the unreliable narrator was indeed completely unreliable.

As usual, extensive notes can be found on the Archive of Our Own version of this chapter. Link in my profile. Comments/Reviews/Feedback in general are always very much appreciated. Thanks so much for reading.


	10. Empire of Dirt

_**NOTES:** _A couple quick notes to make this chapter easier reading since there are quite a few time jumps and flashbacks and this story is really just crazy long at this point so I figured it might be nice to include the important dates that appear in this chapter. The last chapter left off on January 23, 2003. The date that Chikusa and Ken met Mukuro and between them they slaughtered every person in Esterneo they could lay hands on was June 9, 1996. So, pay close attention to the timeline headers as they appear to avoid confusion. If there is no header assume the events occur on the same day as the last and that all that has shifted is the viewpoint. The date headers are always based on the character's PoV in this chapter. As with the last chapter the events of this chapter (and the next) start on March 9, 2003 and will proceed to review the events leading up to that day and then move forward from there with flashbacks popping in as necessary. This chapter jumps around a bit in some of the individual sections, but I do make an effort to keep both the overall narrative and the actual flashback sequences in chronological order to limit confusion.

**-ooo-**

_"Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy... fear makes you always, always hold something back."  
_― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

-ooo-  
**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 110  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
March 9, 2003

**MUKURO**

If he were honest with himself, and he did like to pretend that he tried to be, he felt rather stupid as he stomped through the illusionary halls of Esterneo, burning the house down at he went. He wasn't quite certain what he'd thought to find when he scrapped the barrel at the bottom of his soul, but a maze of illusion to traverse wasn't it.

It should have been, of course.

It was nothing more than he deserved.

If he had simply dealt with this issue years ago it wouldn't have come to this. Perhaps he wouldn't have been able to during those first strange days when he'd known so very little about who he was, what he was, but later. When he'd been dragging Ken and Chikusa through the countryside of Northern Italy murdering and maiming whatever bits of the mafia they could find. Perhaps not when he was at Cacciatore or directly after when he'd had to watch Lancia so very closely. But later when they were in Spain or later still in Traditore or before things had taken that ugly turn in New York. He'd tried to deal with it on the boat, he supposed, though that had been a rather spectacular failure. Something he should have realized and faced up to while he hid away and licked his wounds in India, but no. It had always been so much easier just to run.

He'd spent miles and years shrugging his shoulders and dismissing it as a problem he couldn't solve. Rejecting and burying the worst of what he was, the most awful memories that made him, as deep as they could go, trying to neuter himself again and again and only making it worse and worse each and every time. But in realizing that difficult truth, he should have taken a full accounting of himself, dug through the dregs to be certain, to be sure, that he wasn't missing something so blatantly, pathetically obvious.

It was just… embarrassing, really.

Unprofessional.

To have simply assumed that he was beyond reproach, incapable of making such a grave miscalculation, of lying to himself to such an _extraordinary_ extent.

So, in the end, he _deserved_ this.

The problem, of course, was that his problems were not just _his_ problems. They never had been, really. And while he might deserve this, they _didn't_.

He recognized the door.

_Of course_, he recognized the door.

He'd had nightmares about that door for _years_.

Even if he hadn't necessarily known _why_ beyond that it was his door.

It was… different now.

He remembered carving the initials above the door's handle and adding the ones below as well. How _precious_ he had been then, how hopeless, kneeling on the ground, exhausted after that first week of relentless testing, but he'd been… _happy_, or as close as he had ever been at any rate. It had been his secret, his special secret, because he hadn't told his father every little thing about it and his father hadn't believed what he had told him anyway.

That week had been awful. His father had forced him from one body to the next, relentless, demanding that he mask his presence completely. And he'd tried, of course, he'd tried, he _always_ tried for all the good it often did then.

But he was so _tired_.

They were both exhausted and angry and spent, but he wouldn't _stop_. He didn't care how tired they were. They needed to push past their limits if they were to become better, if they were to be of use. It was terrible and each new day was worse than the last, a hundred times worse, but at least he wasn't alone. It was like having a friend, almost, a friend and a secret all in one and it had made him feel warm inside to think that he wasn't alone.

He'd so often been alone then.

He traced those initials with a trembling finger.

He'd run so very long and so very far and yet this door had always been with him, buried down deep inside at the very heart of him. He's not sure why he was surprised to find that, given the opportunity, he'd locked the part of himself he hated the most away in the first prison he'd ever known.

Funny that.

It really was… funny.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He remembered jerking awake night after night in the woods after they left this place to the feel of big hands wrapped around his throat, being unable to breathe, kicking and scratching and fighting and dying. He'd told himself a thousand times that it was just a dream, just some remnant of the boy who used to live here, a ghost of sensation, but it wasn't.

Of course, it wasn't.

He leaned his forehead against that door, suddenly exhausted by his life. It wasn't a new feeling. He'd felt like that more and more often lately, but it was a feeling that had always been there, underlying the empty, aching heart of him.

He was just so very, very tired.

He didn't want to do this.

He didn't want to open this door and see what was on the other side.

What he wanted most, in the end, was to just turn and run the other way. Run away and never look back, because if he ran away he wouldn't have to face this last painful truth. He could keep his rage and wind it all around his heart and burn himself to cinders with it again and again. He could build himself up and tear himself down. Punish himself over and over for all the things he was and wasn't. He was an illusionist and a damn good one. He could build new locks, new doors and halls, whole labyrinths inside his mind. He could lock this door and barricade it, put a thousand doors between this room and the rest of his mind and lock them all. Build the walls higher, stronger, until they were impassable even for him and pretend that there had been nothing more he could have done than that.

Maybe he would even believe it one day.

He could go on with his life and they'd never know and, even if they did, even if he told them, they wouldn't blame him for it. They didn't care about the past or what had brought him into their lives, who and what he had been before, they never had. He could go on with them as they had been and they would never judge him for it. They'd probably have to lose Lancia, but that seemed more inevitability than probability anyway so it would be just as well. They could just… keep running.

And then, maybe next time or maybe the time after that, they would die.

They would die and he'd lie to himself and say that he'd done everything he could to prevent it, that he'd done his best by them. He'd apologize, perhaps, maybe drown himself in murder and death until he felt better or felt nothing at all. And that would be all there was to it. He'd be alone again. He'd go on. And perhaps it would be better. Perhaps it would be worth it for those extra hours or days or years of never having to know beyond a shadow of doubt what kind of monster he truly was.

_Come home soon._

_It's not your fault. None of this is your fault._

He opened the door.

He had done far more terrible things for them over the years than just opening a door, after all.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 2597  
ESTERNEO  
NORTHERN ITALY  
May 17, 1996

**SALVATORE/MUKURO**

The boy was still awake, his eyes wide and panicked, darting frantically around the room, as they sliced open and began work on his nasal cavities. He was still screaming silently even if he wasn't able to voice it and the echo of that boy's screams shook through him where he watched, lodged in the mind of one of the surgeons working on one of the relatively minor portions of the operation. He didn't know her name and couldn't bring himself to focus enough to find out. He ached and he just wanted to be done, to go back to his own body and sleep.

This day had been long and difficult and that boy's screaming was distant but there: a rough, screeching inescapable noise he couldn't shake even though he _knew_ he shouldn't be able to hear it at all. He knew the boy had been marked, most people were, but he didn't usually get echoes like this for the others. It had really only happened once before. He could feel the presence he'd dubbed Mukuro churning, agitated and strange, rumbling beside him in that woman's mind, unsettled and buzzing with tension. He'd been like this off and on for the last week or so and it was… kind of weird. It made him feel a little sick.

_This is n-necessary. There's always a price to be paid for strength,_ he explained, unsure whether his words were heard or understood. He had tried explaining this before when the same agitation had happened while they'd been in the room while they were injecting that Kakimoto boy with all that vile-smelling stuff while he shivered and twitched on this very same table. His attempts at explaining how things were hadn't seemed to have much of an impact that time either.

The person they'd been possessing, the one mixing the poisons, had died later that night.

Brain aneurysm.

"It was very unexpected," Father had said as he looked down at him with narrowed eyes. "But then brain aneurysms usually are."

He could hear the unasked question floating in the air between them, but he just hunched in on himself a little more and Father had gone on to talking about some other aspect of the experiment.

It hadn't been their fault.

Of course it hadn't.

But he'd be lying if he said that, in the days that followed, he didn't sometimes… find himself thinking about Mukuro's agitation. Or about the Kakimoto boy's strange, cold rage and how sad he'd seemed as he lay on that table. How he'd been so different from the other kids, the ones who had come before him: the true believers who had been proud or excited about what was happening to them and the lost ones who were more shell than person by the time they were laid out on those tables.

_T-there's… n-no other way to s-survive,_ he finished lamely, forcing his focus back to this room, to this other silently screaming boy and the woman they possessed. The one who was hard at work doing something painful looking to the boy's leg.

_I-It's for the best, _he whispered, but the words felt thin and pale even to him as the boy's screams continued to rattle through them.

**-ooo-**

Marta Adduci cursed softly as her hand quivered and slipped and the scalpel slid across her fingers, so sharp that it didn't hurt. If she hadn't been watching she'd never even have noticed the wound until it started to bleed and the flow of blood began to interfere with her work. She pulled back quickly, splashing blood across shiny metal as she whipped it back and sighed, irritated, before holding up her wounded hand and calling for the medic, "Injury at Station 3!"

She felt the momentary blistering heat of the medic's flames flicker over her hand before she even saw him sidle up to her, chasing the burn with a sanitizing cloth to wipe away the blood that remained. Injury sealed, she turned her attention back to the leg she'd been working on. She was fortunate. If the wound had been more serious she'd have been pulled and someone else would have been shuffled in to take her place to avoid losing this window of opportunity.

The white sheets they'd used to cover his torso and thighs bucked and shimmied as she turned back. A quick glance at the wall clock told her that his recovery time had increased again. She frowned and tightened the straps down to help still the motion. She had expected the surgery to be a challenge, they all had, but this was still outside of anything they'd expected. They'd loaded him up with enough sedatives to kill someone twice his size and yet he was still mostly conscious and aware and, though she didn't care to dwell on it, quite certainly able to feel ever incision and alteration they made.

_If it were me… I'd probably have gone quite mad by now._

But that was a problem for later. They could assess his mental state after the work was complete. It would all have been for nothing if they stopped now. It was, after all, of the utmost importance that they complete their work while the body was in a state where the trauma it had suffered was so overwhelming that they could force the body to prioritize repairing the most grievous wounds, thus keeping it from replicating cells and healing the surgery sites long enough to allow for the installations to take place. It was the only way to get it done at all, much less with any degree of efficiency. Particularly when there was such an enormous amount of installation that needed to be completed.

She prepared another local as she noticed that the towel she'd laid across his twitching feet was beginning to quiver like a tree in a hurricane again. The curling, writhing feet and toes caused the shimmy and if it were allowed to continue without appropriate intervention, she knew the feet within their manacles would begin to beat a frantic rhythm against the tabletop. It was a distraction and the work she needed to complete on his left tibialis anterior muscle required both concentration and precision, which simply wasn't possible with him jerking about like that.

_It was honestly a bit irritating._

She stabbed the needle into a vein, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary, but she really didn't appreciate the delay. Fortunately the local was fast acting so it wasn't long after she pushed the plunger down that the muscles loosened and the beat slowed and then stopped altogether, the towel lay limp, just barely quivering once more. She breathed out a sigh of relief. She probably had only a few minutes before it wore off again, the twitching in his torso seemed to have lessened as well which meant one of the others working on him must have released another dose into his system, which was fortuitous. It might allow her just enough time to complete her work in peace since all that was really left to do was to widen the incision again and thread the fibers into the muscle and install two more chips.

The rapid pace at which his body was evolving while they worked was simply stunning, but it was also incredibly challenging. He was truly a fascinating specimen and one they were lucky the Boss had been able to procure. She widened the incision just a bit on each side, just enough. If he survived, if he was strong enough to endure, he would truly be something extraordinary and Esterneo would certainly thrive by employing his talents. She smiled at the muscle laid bare before her and she plucked up her needle and began threading the fiber through even as she picked up the scalpel to set it aside with her free hand.

The pain came a moment later, sudden and intense and she dropped her needle, stunned, as she cried out and slapped her free hand down against the sharp molten pain in her upper thigh. Her hand hit the scalpel buried there and she screamed as the force of her unintentional blow slammed the blade deeper into her thigh and blood spurted out around the edges of the wound, messy and warm. From the way it was seeping, practically squirting, from the wound, she knew with a sinking certainty that she had severed the femoral artery. She opened her mouth to call for help, to call for the medic who was standing just a few yards away, but found she couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't force even a single whisper of sound to slip from her lips as if her vocal cords had all but vanished. It was as if her body was freezing up an inch at a time ad blood continued to spill down her leg and across the floor.

All she could do was _bleed_, bleed and wait and pray someone would notice. Panicked thoughts zipped through her mind like gunshots:

_God, what was wrong with… why can't I…._

_Oh, no, no, no. This wasn't happening, this couldn't be happening…._

_Salvatore? _She asked the last silently, hesitatingly, pleadingly, because she knew the Boss had been allowing that creepy little bastard of his to experiment with infiltration while they worked. She had been certain that this operation was too important for nonsense, but….

Boss rarely let an opportunity or a moment slip by where he didn't attempt to maximize his investment. Salvatore shivered, panicked and unsure of what to do.

He _should_ help her, he _knew_ he should, she was family and his father would probably want him to, but…

_I-It had felt _good_ to let that happen._

_To just let M-Mukuro do it._

_To let it happen and not lift a finger to stop it._

The first had felt almost like an accident, an impulse, a flare of frustration, of wanting to help, maybe, and the scalpel had slipped, slicing her fingers.

N-no big deal really, but it had…. It had made him feel all… _giggly_ inside, light and strange and squirmy and maybe even a little happy too. Like… like they shared a secret. B-because he'd f-felt for the first time that he thought that _maybe_ he understood, that he had felt what Mukuro felt, or at least he _thought_ he had anyway. He'd definitely disliked her too.

_Her mind felt… gross. She'd been mean and weak and… she'd kept talking, no, thinking about him like he was a t-thing. Like it didn't matter that it hurt… that he hurt. That he was screaming. He was screaming and she was…._

She hadn't _cared_.

She had been… _cruel_.

The scalpel slid into her thigh like a hot knife through butter. And… _oh_ that had b-been something. Something clean, and it had made him feel… pure and _good_, maybe. It was like satisfaction, it had felt… _righteous_, maybe.

He'd _wanted_ to.

Mukuro had _wanted_ to hurt her.

For the first time he'd been able to tell with absolutely clarity exactly what Mukuro wanted and it had been what he wanted too and they'd… they'd done it together. _Together._ One will united to action as that screaming had been grown so very loud around them, getting louder and sharper all the time. And this hadn't stopped that, but… but it had felt _right._ Right to hurt her, just as it had been right to trick her into stabbing herself, pushing the blade deep and deeper until it slid through that artery. And now that it had…

Now that he had….

Well, he couldn't v-very well j-just let her go, could he?

_If I let her go then she'd tell Father on us, wouldn't she?_

_I won't tell! I won't! I- please, oh, it's… oh god, it hurts, please, please… I don't want to die. I don't want to die, please!_

_Oh? Did I send that? I didn't mean to. Oops. You should be quiet. It's already very loud in here. He doesn't like all the noise,_ Salvatore found himself grumbling, not altogether certain if he was talking about himself or Mukuro.

_Oh, you horrible little monster._

Well, that wasn't very nice.

_I'm going to die. I'm going to die because of this little psycho._

He'd always bothered her, _always_. Experimenting on normal children was one thing, but this one… he'd been _bred_ for it. He'd always been strange, off, wrong, ever since the very beginning. This was the Boss' only surviving child, but he was also his failed experiment, his _obsession_. The little freak that just wouldn't stay dead. How many times had he died now? Seven? Eight? He was a _monster_. Was it really all that surprising that he was finally acting like one? She should have known this would happen. Seen it coming. She should have left when she had the chance. Done as the White Glove had done maybe and traded her son for her freedom, but… what they were planning, the science had just been so _riveting_. So fascinating and now she was going to die for that interest.

_It wasn't worth it._

He had marked all of them to give the boy multiple targets to ping between. The little bastard was meant to be unobtrusive, to learn to use his new abilities with subtlety and finesse to infiltrate as well as possess. It was a revolting thought, so she hadn't liked to think about it too much, but it was supposed to be harmless. He wasn't supposed to act. None of them had even been certain he was capable of anything like this, this degree of complete possession. Most people weren't without months of training and he hadn't really advanced much in the last few years, despite the Boss' increasingly desperate attempts to prod his latent powers into reawakening. Even transplanting the eye had been a waste until the initiation of the soul project and even after that the effect had seemed pretty minimal.

But apparently the little weasel had just been hiding his light under a bushel all this time. He'd fooled them all.

_Please, please let me go. I'm going to die if you don't let me go. Your father will be so angry if you kill me, _she tried. She knew the little snot longed for the Boss' approval. What son didn't? _I'll be difficult to replace. He'll be furious at the time you've wasted._

The sound she received in return was like nothing she'd ever heard. It wasn't even a voice, not really, and it wasn't an answer, not truly. It was just a sound, a terrible screech like a rusty saw blade squealing across metal and it was accompanied by the sound of her own voice, her own thoughts, perhaps, played back to her at high speed, a whine of accompanying dialogue.

**_It was honestly a bit irritating._**

**_It was honestly a bit irritating._**

**_It was honestly a bit irritating._**

She felt her hand twitch, deepening the cut, and no one seemed to notice or care. She was screaming inside, but no one was coming to help her. She watched, horrified, as the others moved around her, around the table, stepping in the pool of blood spreading across the floor and tracking it from one end of the operating room to the other while she watched in silence. Her vision was beginning to blur, her consciousness wavering and she heard that sound again, that terrible screeching sound and she realized as she tumbled from her stool, as she sprawled across the floor, as pain exploded through her head and the world went black, that that sound, that awful screech, was _laughter_.

He slid away from her as she died, slipped across the room into one of the technicians and it hurt, as it always hurt, but… that wasn't all he felt. It wasn't just pain. He pressed the technician's sweaty palms against the table, breathing hard. He'd just… he'd just… he'd just killed someone and it had…

**_Your father will be angry if you kill me._**

He glanced over at all the slick, sticky red blood pooled and splattered across the tiles. At the nurse's wide, glazed eyes. Her face a frozen mask of terror.

_It had felt so _good_._

**_He'll be furious at the time you've wasted._**

He wanted to kill someone else, everyone else, all of them, everyone in the whole, wide world, maybe. He wanted to make it stop. Make the world stop. Make the pain stop, the screaming stop. And he could. He knew it was possible. He could feel it, that power burning him up from the inside, giddy and thrilled to be used. They could do it. No one could stop them. He was… he _could_. Everything would be so _quiet_. Just right. Everything would be okay if he could just… it would be….

The technician put a hand to his mouth, his teeth worrying at a nail.

**_Oh, you horrible little monster._**

_N-No. No._

_I'm not…_

_It had felt so…._

_No._

_No, it h-hadn't. It _hadn't_. Of course it hadn't. It hadn't felt good at all. I-It h-had been scary. It was scary. I was scared and it had been scary and it hadn't felt good or anything like that. It had been _awful_._

It had been a-awful and h-he hadn't been able to stop it. T-There was nothing he could have done. He smiled and it felt brittle, breakable, and utterly foreign on the technician's face. He nodded to himself, quick and certain, his foot tapping a nervous rhythm against the tiles.

R-Right. Of course right. He hadn't killed her. It wasn't his f-fault. He'd just… he'd just l-let Mukuro do it. That was all. H-He just hadn't s-stopped him. Hadn't been _a-able_ to stop him. It was just an a-accident, just a tragic a-accident. No one would blame him. No one _could_ blame him. It wasn't his fault and no one had to know. Not really.

He dropped the illusions he'd been holding to obscure the body from sight and there were frantic cries as the others noticed her, blood-soaked and still, her eyes staring blank and terrified and blind at the frantic feet gathering around her.

He raised the technician's gaze from his work and he found the boy on the table staring at him with those wide, angry eyes and he found himself caught by them. He could still hear that screaming in his head, could still hear the echo of that nurse's voice.

**_If it were me, I'd have gone mad._**

Those eyes asked for nothing, but there was rage enough there to burn the entire world to ashes. He wondered… wondered what it was like to feel that passionately about anything. He never had, had he? Never and… then he was suddenly there in that boy's mind. He hadn't intended to move, to traverse that distance, and yet he had and the pain was all around him, everywhere, pulsing through him, inescapable. It shouldn't have been. This was all wrong. He'd never… he hadn't felt that woman's pain when she was stabbed, when she was dying. Why now? Why this? What was happening?

It _burned _and he couldn't escape it.

The doctors working on his face hadn't even bothered to glance up when all the commotion about the nurse had begun; so focused and intent were they on completing their task. He could feel them prodding about, tweaking nerves and threading in fibers like that woman had been doing and… it felt like someone had lit his face on fire. A slow, inevitable, inescapable raw ache coupled with an itch he couldn't scratch. He jerked against his bonds, trying to reach it, reach _them_ and _stop them_, but he couldn't _move_. He was trapped and unable to do more than jerk and twitch, his muscles slow and sluggish. He felt his borrowed fingers curl into claws with a sharp, squealing sound as his nails scrapped across the metal surface of the table. It hurt, it hurt, it _hurt _and he couldn't escape it. Couldn't move beyond it or away from it, couldn't hide from it or do anything to mitigate it. He choked and cried and screamed and he knew none of it really mattered or was even heard by anyone but himself… himself and the one trapping him here.

_Stop it. Stop it!_ He sobbed, turning and twisting and trying to squirm free of this prison of a body, but he couldn't. For all his effort he couldn't do anything but burn. Mukuro was like a great black stone, anchoring him to this flesh, unmoved by his pain, by his horror. _Let me go! Please let me go! I c-can't, I c-c-can't take it. It's…_ please!

And then he heard it. His own words played back to him at high-speed and he _knew_. He knew Mukuro had been listening. Had been listening all this time.

**_This is necessary. There's always a price to be paid for strength. There's… no other way to s-survive._**

_That's not what I meant! This isn't what I meant! M-Mukuro, please! Please! Why are you doing this? Why? I'm… we're… why?_

**_This is necessary. There's always a price to be paid for strength. There's… no other way to s-survive._**

_Was this what he deserved?_

_Was this the price he had to pay?_

_Oh god, it hurts. It hurts, please, please, please…._

And it was only getting worse. Worse and worse like the pain was growing, tangling around him like thorny vines digging into his limbs, ripping at him as they wound round and round his skin, tightening and loosening and tightening again like the beat of a frantic heart. And he could tell that the boy wasn't there anymore, was shoved into the back of his head somewhere, folded back behind screens of illusion that would keep him… safe. Would make it so he wouldn't notice, wouldn't remember the horrors they visited upon his body now and suddenly he _understood_. He understood and he _hated_ it. Hated him.

_You're doing this for _him_. You hurt… you _killed_ that nurse for him. Why? You don't even… who the hell is he to you? You'd sacrifice me… us… for _him_? Are you stupid? You can't do this. You can't!_

**_There's… no other way to s-survive._**

_STOP SAYING THAT!_

**_There's… no other way to s-survive._**

_I hate you, I hate you, I _hate_ you. You're a monster and I hate you! Please make it stop, it hurts, it hurts! Please let me out, let me go. Stop, please, stop, please don't do this, help me, please make it stop, please…_

_**I-It's for the best.**_

He screamed and screamed as the pain coursed through nerves that were not his own. It wasn't as vivid as it might have been if the body had truly been his own, maybe, but it was... he'd go mad if he had to endure this, just like that woman had said, he'd go _mad_. He needed to get out, he needed to escape, he needed to be back in his own body, b-but he couldn't.

There was no escape.

There was no way out but through.

It was like quicksand; the more he struggled the deeper he sunk beneath the surface until there was only the sand… only the pain.

Pain enough to fill his entire world.

He breathed and bled and lived it and when it finally stopped, hours or seconds or days later, he felt _nothing _at all, as if that pain had cauterized his nerves until all that was left was an ache, a dull throbbing memory of agony.

He slipped away, dripped back into his own body like water leaking into a boat and as he went he peeled back the illusion over the boy's consciousness and let him tumble back into his drugged and battered body, exhausted and twitching in the aftermath, none the wiser and too dopey or stupid to realize what he'd missed.

Every fiber of his being was sore and raw and alive with pain and he woke, soaked in blood and tears with a mouth that tasted like bile, alone. And still he felt nothing. Mukuro's presence was dark and inert and uncaring at the back of his mind once more and he wondered if he'd felt all that too or if it had just been him.

Whether he even cared.

He tumbled off the table onto the floor below, hitting the tile with a loud, resounding smack and the shock reverberated through his body awakening screaming nerves that echoed with the torment of what he'd experienced in that boy's mind. He sobbed, curling in on himself, covered his mouth and screaming into his hands as the world went dark around him.

He woke up to laughter and knew, in a vague, strangely detached way, that it was his own. Soft and rough and hysterical and he shook with it, trembling against the cold tile floor, his muscles stiff and aching. His face and body ached, probably from the impact of slipping off the table, of crashing to the ground. He'd have terrible bruises, probably.

He could smell vomit, rank and vile and close. He was covered in blood, could still feel it dripping slowly from his nose to puddle beneath him. It was tacky, sticky, beneath his cheek and he wondered how long he'd been there, why no one had bothered to come and check on him. He was important, wasn't he? Important, vital to the family and so maybe someone had come and seen him earlier and gone to get help or… or something. He was the hope of this family, after all. His father had named him Salvatore because that was what he was meant to be. He was meant to be….

_It doesn't matter, you don't matter; no one is coming._

That wasn't true. It was just… busy. There was a lot going on.

T-They'd probably gotten distracted by the dead woman.

The woman he'd….

The woman Mukuro had k-killed. It had been… cruel. She'd only been doing her job, only been helping that… that… little _animal_ to be better. To be the best he could be. She'd just been trying to help their family and Mukuro had _killed_ her for it. As if she deserved it and he'd _enjoyed_ it. He'd felt that. He'd felt the joy, yes, that taste of something like victory as the nurse bled and screamed in silence and he'd tried to stop it, he'd tried to help, hadn't he? Of course, he had. He was a good boy. But he'd been… he'd been…

That's what it was. He'd tried, but he'd been _powerless_. He wasn't like _him_. He wasn't like _him_ at all.

Mukuro Rokudou was… was a m-monster.

Of course, it was probably just a fluke, a demonstration of strength he'd never be capable of again. But… but… he was still frightened of the_ potential_ of the monster within him. It had been as natural as breathing to take control of her, to hold those illusions around her. To push those illusions into the minds of the others, playing on their expectations to keep them blind to her plight. It had been just as simple a matter to release it, to tear away from her failing body and flow fluidly from body to body in the aftermath. It had been _exhilarating_. That power and the ease with which they… _he_ had wielded it, but t-terrifying too. He hadn't been able to control it, hadn't even been able to touch it really, he'd just been taken along for the ride. All the experience, none of the control, so the fault for their… _his_ actions would never be his, but neither would the choice.

And that pain… that pain had been _awful_, inescapable. He wasn't even really surprised when he woke to find himself lying in a puddle of nastiness. That his body had reacted to the stimuli provided by the tenuous connection between mind and body that still existed even when he'd been thrown from his body by the force of the possession bullet. That slender thread that made it so he could always find his way home again, to drag his soul from the horrors of that borrowed body once Mukuro had finally deigned to release him from that fleshy prison. And now that he was back in his own body, Mukuro had returned to that dark corner of his mind once more, without apology or explanation, as if he'd done nothing wrong and had nothing to answer for.

He wasn't alone, having Mukuro meant he was never truly alone anymore, but it was still terribly lonely just the same.

His mouth tasted gross and the stench from the puddle he lay in was foul. He should move, even though it hurt, should move before the smell made him sick… sicker.

Maybe try to clean up, but everything hurt and he was pretty sure he'd fall back down in it if he tried.

He waited for someone to come.

The air conditioner clicked and whirred to life and he still lay on that floor, shivering and damp. He was thirsty and his throat burned, painful and dry.

It was hard to swallow.

Minutes passed.

No one came.

He should probably get cleaned up.

He had expected his father to come to question him about his experience at least, as that was his habit, but… he hadn't.

The door remained firmly shut.

Rolling over was hard, his wrist hurt, and his vision swam as his head fell soft but jarring against the tile as he turned. He could feel something, blood maybe, dribbling down across his face and through his hair. His stomach complained loudly, irritated by smell, the movement or the feel of that dripping sludge, maybe all of it. His pants were wet and now that he wasn't right on top of the puddle, he could smell the sharp stench of urine too.

He closed his eyes as shame swept over him, through him.

Father would be _furious_.

There was a sound. Terrible and creaky and loud and it took a moment before he realized he was laughing again.

It _wasn't_ funny.

He laughed anyway.

He pushed himself up onto unsteady legs, feeling for all the world like a fawn taking its first steps as he stumbled to the table so he could lean against it for support and begin the slow, painstaking process of tearing the soiled, stained clothing from his body.

_Why_ did he keep insisting on wearing these stupid suits every day? Who was he trying to impress? Father? Father didn't care about his clothes, only his talent.

If he never wore another suit in his life it would be too soon.

He shook and shivered as he yanked the tie loose and tossed it to the floor. He pulled too hard at the expensive fabric of his shirt and ended up ripping the threads, sending buttons pinging away across the floor and into the walls and table in his hurry to lose the shirt and jacket. He was crying again by the time he managed to fumble loose the fastenings on his pants.

Once naked he wadded all his discarded, disgusting clothes up and shoved it into the contamination bin so they would be incinerated. He never wanted to see it again. He never wanted to see _anything_ that reminded him of this day again. Including that boy, no, _especially_ that boy.

He was still shivering and sobbing, wiping at his nose furiously and having to wash his hands again and again to rid them of additional blood and snot. The sink was deep and the faucet was high enough that he was able to stick is head beneath the stream. The water was bitterly cold and it made his shivering worse, but he was at least able to wash the gunk out of his hair. He cleaned up as well as he could manage with just the sink and the rough, lemon-scented soap they used in the dispenser, reluctantly patting his body dry with paper towels when he couldn't find anything better.

There weren't any spare clothes in the little examination room, but there were a few cloth hospital gowns stored in a dusty cupboard in the corner. He slipped into one and found it was adult-sized so on him it was more cape than gown and he was able to wrap it around himself like a dress. Not great, not ideal, maybe, but good enough. He'd take good enough right now. Good enough at least meant that he didn't have to streak naked through the halls of Esterneo.

He scrubbed up the worst of the blood and the vomit from the table and floor with what remained of the paper towels. He was filthy afterwards, but at least most of the evidence of what had happened was gone. He changed his gown and washed up again. By the time he was done, his hands were sore and red from scrubbing and he was dressed in a new gown, fiddling nervously with the strings. The room reeked of vomit and lemon cleaner and everything hurt.

And Father never come.

_No one had come._

Too occupied with their new project and his _amazing_ healing abilities and _astonishing _physicality, maybe. Gifted. He was _gifted_, just like him. And just like him it wasn't enough. They would tear him apart and put him back together again and again and it wouldn't be enough so they'd start again, approach the problem from a new angle. This time they'd get it right. This time it would be perfect, he would be perfect.

It was never enough.

Nothing was ever, _ever_ enough.

It didn't matter.

The family was all that mattered and this was for the good of the family.

His operation would be a success and he… everything would be… fine. Because _of course_ it would. Even without Mukuro's interference it would have been fine. The family valued them. They were _special_, _important_. That stupid boy was just… ungrateful.

He didn't deserve to be part of this family if he couldn't understand that. Understand that pain was necessary, that it was how you knew you were growing properly.

He was sure they'd make him understand. Explain to him the importance of the family and his place in it. He'd understand.

They always did… eventually.

He stumbled back to his room in silence on unsteady legs, both hoping and dreading the thought that he might run into someone on the way, but too flustered and tired to remain. He wanted his own space, his own bed with his own _things_ around him. He wanted to be alone and safe amongst them even if such thoughts were only an illusion.

He shut the door behind him and crawled into his bed, pulling the blanket over his head. He sobbed into his knees, curling tighter as he shivered and shook.

He couldn't- _wouldn't_\- tell his father about Mukuro, about what Mukuro had done.

Father could never know, never ever know, that he'd lost control that badly.

That he'd been that terribly… _weak_.

He wouldn't have to lie. He could just forget. He could just build up a wall like Father had taught him. It was easy. He just had to seal it away behind an illusion that told a different story, a story that everything had been fine. No one would have to know, not even him. All he had to do was believe it.

Believe that everything had gone well; he'd just watched the operation from the safety of the technician. The nurse dying had just been a tragic accident. He'd been as surprised as anyone. After the operation was complete, he'd gone back to his own body. He'd been tired. He'd gone to take a nap. He… he was only naked because he'd bled a bit. The bleeding happened sometimes. That was normal. He'd gotten a little sick because of something he'd eaten, thrown up in the sink, Gross, maybe, but nothing to worry about.

No one had to know.

_I'll die before I tell._

_I hate them._

_I hate them so much._

_I hate _him_ so much._

-ooo-  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: UNKNOWN  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
?

**MUKURO**

He awoke panting, choking back a scream, illusions swimming and swarming and snapping in the air around him, layers of camouflage to protect him, to protect others from him… he wasn't certain. He'd always known, intellectually, that a lot of illusionists had issues with control initially, particularly those who were born with a strong innate talent with mist flames. Control hadn't been an issue for him, not really, not in the beginning and certainly not as he'd learned and grown.

His illusions had always been perfectly trained to heed him from the very beginning so it was unsettling to see them cropping up unbidden around him, lashing out like this.

As if he were a child awakening from a bad dream.

The sort of child he'd never truly been.

Probably.

He was quite certain he had Lancia to blame for this. Lancia and his own impulsiveness, because _of course_ he'd rushed over and ripped the lid off that secret place in his soul the moment he'd left Lancia to his thoughts in that cell. It had been foolish, reckless, dangerous, impulsive, but- most of all- it had been _stupid_. And he'd _known_ that, he'd known and he hadn't _cared_. He'd just been so… intent on proving that he was stronger than anything and everything that lived within him in that moment that he hadn't been able to wait, to think, to plan, he'd just charged right in like a moron and, of course, it had been that memory that was waiting for him, nestled so neatly at the top of the pile.

And it was… it wasn't _his_.

It _wasn't_.

But it _was_ and….

His memories of before were- had always been- spotty at best. They came and went, bobbing and tangled in with all the rest. All those other lives. They'd been little more than weird anomalies. Just vaguely familiar traces of himself, of Ken and Chikusa, of being in the dark and then just being there in that operating room on that day while they poked and prodded at him and the great, black nothing that had come before the rage.

That sudden uncontrollable rage that he'd never fully understood. He'd always assumed there was nothing between his creation and all that death, but….

He _wasn't_ that boy, he'd never been… he _wasn't_… so why…?

He slapped a hand against his cheek hard and then again. The pain was dull, more an annoyance than anything more dramatic, but it was still enough to allow him to focus past the panic swirling around in his chest, to allow him to breathe again.

It didn't matter.

Whatever he had been, whatever he was now.

That wasn't… it didn't matter. It wasn't important. Not now. He needed to focus. He had other concerns. Other…

Ken… was still sleeping or perhaps sleeping again, maybe. It was impossible to know one way or the other. His thoughts were dark, thick and sluggish and unwelcoming as a tar pit, probably courtesy of all the drugs in his system. Drugs that must have been far too much for his system to process, he was in terrible shape after all. He'd have to go check on him himself, he….

Right. He turned his head to stare sourly at the cuff around his wrist, jerking his hand again irritably so the chain rattled and the adjoining cuff scrapped along the rail.

He'd forgotten about that.

Ah, well, it wasn't as it were an insurmountable problem.

He slipped into the realm of Hell, letting the familiar pain settle and ground him as he sat up slowly, carefully sliding across the bed, using real illusions to shore up muscles that were weak and uncertain and stiff. He felt awful, vaguely sick and weak and… how long had he been sleeping? What day was it? He reached out for a connection and found… nothing.

Well, that wasn't _entirely_ true. He could feel Chikusa and Ken sleeping, Lancia brooding like the overly emotional asshole he was and, very distantly, a few of his more recent acquisitions: the boy and girl in Namimori, the property agent in Tokyo, a few others, but everything else….

Virtually everyone he'd marked since Mumbai, including the damn guards he'd marked since arriving back at Traditore, were _gone_. Nothing but broken threads waving in the wind, dead or liberated; he found himself actually _hoping_ for dead since it was the least complicated recovery option.

This week officially _sucked balls_.

He'd almost sacrificed _everything_ he valued and he had wreaked most of the plans he'd spent the last few months on, all because he'd just _had_ to go freaking _house hunting_.

That was just _never_ going to stop being embarrassing.

_Dammit._

And it wasn't even as if he could talk to Lancia about it. He'd rather pluck out his own eyes than go back down there. Of course, it wasn't as if he even really wanted to talk to him or anything. It was just… everything was so muddled and it had all gone so _wrong _and with Chikusa and Ken out of commission there was no one else. And he couldn't even really check on them because they were sleeping and he was chained to this stupid, _stupid_ bed.

Of course, there were some limited alternatives.

He concentrated, feeling the burn of effort at the back of his mind that indicated that he was still run down despite however much sleep he'd gotten. Still, a crow sprung into existence at the foot of the bed, perched tentatively on the rail, talons clicking, it's head cocked to the side, awaiting orders. He flicked his fingers at the curtains surrounding Chikusa's bed and with a soft caw the crow swept into the air, talons catching at the thin fabric and shifting it aside. The crow vanished from existence between one beat of its wings and the next and Mukuro breathed a sigh of relief as the tension of maintaining the real illusion abated.

Chikusa was still lying in the bed in much the same position he'd been the last time he'd seen him, mask over his face, arms stiff and unnatural at his sides. He reached out tentatively and could feel some of the illusions he'd lodged in his veins and in his heart to help shore up the repaired valve doing their work. Most seemed superfluous now, but he left them in place for the moment, it would be a bit of a drain, but not a substantial one and it would make it easier to monitor his condition.

Mukuro glanced around the infirmary and found one other bed occupied, the curtain drawn around it. It was in the corner of the room, well away from them. Not the person who stabbed Chikusa, no, he was vaguely aware that that person was dead. So, who…? It didn't matter. There would be time enough to find out once he was out of this bed.

There was little enough else about the infirmary to recommend it. The doors were solid, featuring tiny peephole windows and there was a tiny office in the corner of the room nearest the door. He could hear movement inside, probably the on-duty nurse. No guards in the room, no additional security measures. There was a camera in one corner of the room, but it appeared to be trained uselessly on the doors as if that were the only possible source of trouble. Traditore's security was a joke. At least when he'd been down in solitary confinement he'd been able to convince himself that escaping was a challenge in and of itself rather than the primary difficulty being in staying free once they managed to get out. At least there he'd been confined by thick chains and stone walls and that awful muzzle. Here… there was nothing. They'd chained him to the bed as if her were harmless, a mere child rather than the mass murderer they knew him to be.

It was actually… really insulting.

And he no _idea _what day it was which left him feeling disoriented and edgy. How long had he been sleeping in this stupid bed? His skin itched at the idea that he'd been lying down this whole time, open and vulnerable. That strangers, guards, whoever had touched him, moved him, bathed this body while he was out of it. He crawled a little further up the head of the bed, he'd have felt better if he could put a wall to his back, but the bed didn't allow for that and neither did the chain that clanked or the cuff that pinched where his hand strained against the metal.

It was absurd that he was here at all. He hadn't intended to be gone long enough to arose suspicion and he'd laid illusions enough around himself before he'd left that they should have been put off, the guards uninterested in him or whether he was eating or not.

But they hadn't been. The illusions seemed to have failed the moment he left his body behind.

Which was _vexing_.

It felt as if his entire world was spinning out of control and he wasn't certain which way was up. All he knew was that he needed it to stop.

No, what he really needed, what he needed more than anything else was to _hurt_ someone.

Anyone would do really.

He just needed to crush a dream, break a heart, stab someone in the damn face, or break some fingers. Really anything would do so long as it ended with tears or pain. Preferably _both_.

But that was part of the problem. He could run, escape into another body, get away from this place and the persistent, irritating bleeping of the machines and hurt as many people as he liked if he were so minded. He could do enough to make the panic subside, to let him not care so damn much, but he… he didn't want to be away from them. Didn't want to take the chance that something might happen again while he was gone. That he might not be there to help next time, to save them if they needed saving. No, he couldn't leave now. Not again. Not so soon.

Which meant he was trapped here in his body as surely as he was chained to this ridiculous bed. He'd need to use the human realm to break free of the restraints and he wasn't looking forward to that. It hurt and it felt disgusting and once it was done he'd need to create a realistic illusion to take his place in this bed to avoid arousing suspicion. Though, realistic as it might be, it wouldn't fool the machines and so he'd need to come up with a way to deal with _that_ and the illusion would sap his already dwindling resources. He could just stay here, wait until he'd recovered or Ken woke up, but…

"Oh, hello," the nurse commented emerging from the office and startling a little as he noticed one of his patients was awake.

Mukuro breathed out a sigh of relief as the nurse's arrival solved several of his problems. He recognized the skinny man with the ginger hair as the one Lancia had called Larry. He also remembered, vaguely, that Larry was an idiot- or at least Lancia had thought so- a fact that concerned him only in so far as it presented an opportunity.

Mukuro smiled up at him, sickeningly sweet. His voice when he spoke was a rough rasp from the weeks he'd gone without, "I'm so thirsty. Could I have some water?"

"Sure, yeah, of course," Larry replied, giving him a tentative smile as he set his clipboard down on a low cabinet next to the office door. He snagged a paper cup and filled it with water and walked over to him without even a hint of hesitation.

Larry really was an idiot.

"I was getting really concerned about you! I've never seen anyone just sleep like that before. I mean my grandma slept a lot right before she passed, but she was really sick and, as far as the docs could tell, there wasn't a thing wrong with you besides some mild dehydration and even that wasn't as serious as it probably should have been. Don't try to move too much yet. Here, drink it slow."

Mukuro sipped the water, draining the tiny cup over the course of minutes, "Thank you."

"No problem, it's my job, you know?" Larry grinned though it wilted a little around the edges when Mukuro let the smile fall from his face.

"I suppose it is, passerotto. Tragic that," Mukuro murmured, the familiar twinge of pain and he slipped into the realm of Hell, a quick fortification of his muscles and he was able to lunge forward and slap a real illusion of duct tape over Larry's mouth. Larry was slow and surprised, probably still trying to figure out where he'd gotten the duct tape. Mukuro took a quick fortifying breath and drove his nails into his eye piercing the surface and there was the familiar sensation, like crashing through a window as he tumbled into the human realm, biting his lip bloody to stifle the scream that threatened.

God, it hurt, it _always_ hurt, and it seemed to hurt today more than usual, but that didn't matter.

What mattered was that with the human realm active it was child's play to break the chain binding his wrist to the bed rail with a quick jerk. He pulled the IV needle from of his arm and planted it in the unfortunate nurse's eye, before kicking him hard in stomach with his bare foot. He ripped the monitoring cuff off his arm and tossed it down on the bed, ignoring the machines as they beeped and blared in protest. Larry had fallen to the ground with a muffled scream and Mukuro followed him down, crouching over him, his heel grinding down against Larry's throat, just shy of hard enough to cause permanent damage. "I'm sure you probably already realize this, but if I press just a little harder, I will crush your trachea. You'll be unable to breathe. You will suffocate and you _will_ die. I hear it's a _very_ unpleasant way to go. Would you care to hear about the less fatal alternatives?"

Larry nodded frantically, tears leaking from his eyes. He was still screaming behind the tape and that was irritating, but hardly surprising. It didn't matter. No one would be able to hear it.

"Very good. We're going to play a game, it's called red light, green light. I'm going to ask you a question and if the answer is yes, you'll nod just like you're doing now, and if the answer is no, you'll shake your head. That's simple enough, yes? Now it's only fair that you know, Larry, that _if _you lie to me, I _will_ know and I _will_ kill you immediately. I don't much care for liars. Do we understand one another, Larry? Can I call you 'Larry'?"

Larry nodded emphatically, sobbing.

It was really kind of pathetic.

It probably shouldn't have made him smile.

"Wonderful," Mukuro purred, "Now why don't you get up on this bed and get comfortable. I wouldn't want you to catch a chill lying on that cold floor. Leave the needle in your eye though, I quite like the look of it there."

Larry whimpered, but scrambled to his feet when Mukuro released him and into the bed Mukuro had vacated, careful not to jar the IV line that was still dripping fluid into his slowly bloating eye. "My, my, I suppose eyes weren't meant for that sort of treatment, were they? That _does_ look uncomfortable. First question, Larry: how's Chikusa Kakimoto's condition?"

Larry looked positively apoplectic and Mukuro laughed. He could see the affect that had as fear trembled through Larry's skinny body. He was feeling better and more like himself and less like that frightened child with each passing moment. This was _precisely_ what he had had needed. "My, my, but you're so _serious_, Larry. I was only joking about the nodding. You'd think I wasn't funny the way you're carrying on and I know _that_ can't _possibly_ be true. So, go ahead and answer me. Only, if I were you, I'd make a point of doing so succinctly and quietly or I'll gut you like a fish. Patience really isn't my strong suit today."

He wiggled his fingers and the duct tape split forming a zipper in the middle that unzipped seemingly of its own accord to allow him to speak and zipped itself back up whenever he paused for more than a single breath. Larry whimpered at the show of inexplicable power and Mukuro perched on the end of the bed, smirking. "Chop, chop, Larry, I've got a busy day ahead of me."

"He… he's stable. H-He's been really lucky so far. No complications since coming out of surgery."

"Has he woken up?"

"N-No, not that I've seen, but that's not unusual with the medication they've had to give him. He probably won't wake up for a while yet. At least a few hours, maybe a day or two."

"Well done, Larry. See, that wasn't so difficult, was it? I suppose you deserve a reward. You may take the needle out of your eye and jam it into the vein in the back of your hand now. You're going to be me for a day. Oh, don't look so concerned, you won't have to do anything but pretend you're sleeping, that should be simple enough. And, if you play your part well, I might even let you live to see tomorrow." Mukuro smiled pleasantly and while there was absolutely no chance of that happening, hope was a very powerful thing and he could see the light of it glowing in Larry's good eye. He swept the monitoring cuff off the bed and fastened it around Larry's arm, pleased when the machines quieted. "Now, here's my second question: Why am I in the infirmary?"

"Y-you were sleeping for almost three days and…um…"

"Now, now, Larry, have we already forgotten what I said about lying?" Mukuro commented, hopping off the bed and strolling across the room to pluck a scalpel from the unlocked supply closet. They really, really needed to work on their security. Having everything be this simple just took all the fun out of it.

"Uh, no, I-I wasn't…"

"Not yet, but you were thinking about it, weren't you? Whether I'd know if you didn't tell me every little thing? Allow me to help you out on that front, Larry: I would. I absolutely _would_ know and I would start craving little pieces off of you for each little white lie and evasion. Opting out of mentioning things is, after all, ever so close to lying." Mukuro settled back onto the end of the bed, the scalpel balanced across his knuckles. "You see, Larry, I might look like just another kid to you, but I assure you that I'm actually a very dangerous person with an execution date. You don't put someone like _me_ somewhere like_ this_ without so much as a guard in the room without a _very_ good reason. I'm honestly a little insulted that they only handcuffed me to the bed. That's just… sloppy."

"Oh, um, okay, I, um… there was an, uh, incident."

"I know I said to be succinct, Larry, but I think you can imagine I'm going to require a bit more detail than that."

"I don't really know much, I mean, I'm just…"

"A nurse, I'm_ aware_. I'm also aware that if you keep stalling me with your incompetence, I'm going to grow bored and start peeling the flesh from your toes. I get bored very easily, you see."

And story spills from Larry's lips like water and every word makes him feel more ill at ease, "There was this guy, okay? He showed up pretending to be a guard. No one knew any better so he took over in the surveillance room down in Solitary. He was here for almost a week before anyone… that is, before the _warden_ figured out what was happening and tried to have the man killed before he could escape. There were like a half dozen guards surrounding him when the Warden gave the kill order and he somehow got them all to shoot each other or something. I heard he was really interested in you, so we had to move you out of solitary and there aren't enough guards to cover everything and you were unconscious and hadn't shown any signs of waking so…."

"He made the guards shoot each other," he repeated the words slowly, dread weighing his stomach down like lead.

"Uh, yeah? I mean, I guess so. They had him surrounded, I guess, but they all died anyway. No one really knows what happened. The camera in that hall was malfunctioning."

"I'll bet," Mukuro whispered through lips that felt stiff and the brittle as burnt paper. Terror beat in his chest, thrumming and churning, he ground his nails into the palms of his hands to keep it from showing on his face.

_He was here._

_Shut up._

He couldn't think about that now, couldn't think about any of it now.

"Did he leave anything behind? A card or a note? Anything?"

"No, um, just… I heard there were a couple of blocks. Like, I don't know, like children's blocks, maybe? I don't know. It was weird. They found them on the floor outside your room."

"Blocks?"

That sounded familiar… something… about that was definitely familiar, but he couldn't… what was it?

"What kind of blocks?"

"I-I don't know, I just heard about it is all. Warden has them up in his office. They were going to question you about them when you woke up since he only seemed interested in you."

_Of course, he was only interested in me._

He felt the memories swimming around inside him, just below the surface close enough that words slipped free like a fin just breaking the surface of a wave, a whisper of foreboding.

_A day will come when I will be able to reclaim my property and if I have to kill those two to take you back, I will. I can always make others like _them_._

"Not now."

Larry blinked at him, clearly confused and he realized he'd said that out loud. They stared at each other for a moment and then Larry murmured a quick apology and offered him a nervous smile. It was the kind of smile you gave people who talked to themselves on the street, crazy people. The kind of smile that was usually paired with a placating gesture that was meant to convey that they weren't a threat, that everything was fine and they weren't going to hurt you.

He was very familiar with that gesture.

Very familiar with the _lie _of that gesture.

Larry screamed as he shoved the scalpel into the sole of his foot.

He hadn't meant to do that.

He slipped from the bed quickly and turned towards the door with a pleasant smile just as a guard slammed into the room. His illusions were tight and locked in place. He might be a mess, but years of practice were good for this much at least. So he smiled with Larry's face and said in Larry's voice, "Oh, sorry about that. I guess you heard that one all the way out there, huh? This one apparently has night terrors or some sort of weird tic that's causing muscle spasms, I don't know. All I know is it scares the heck out of me every time he does it. Like having a twitchy corpse in a morgue, you know? So freaking creepy."

The guard laughed, visibly relaxing, "For a second there, I thought one of your patients had pulled a knife on you again. You scream like a fucking girl, man."

"Aw, don't say that. I think my screams are pretty manly," he answered, smiling.

The guard scoffed, laughing as he put his gun back in the holster. "Yeah, sure they are. You be sure to scream nice and loud if any of these bastards wakes up and tries to stab you again, got it?"

"You can count on me. I'm not a hero, you know. It's not like I'm just gonna sit back and take a scalpel to the foot for the team, right?"

"Right," the guard replied chuckling and disappearing back out the door.

Larry whimpered from where he'd been frozen on the bed all this time, pinned by a dozen real illusion straps and muzzled while his foot bled, the scalpel still embedded in it.

Mukuro frowned down at him, mildly annoyed, "I feel like I should probably apologize for the scalpel. I don't really like it when people look at me like that, so you'd probably do well to remember that. I realize that's not your fault and you had no way of knowing that was the case, but the world is simply not a very fair place sometimes." He yanked the scalpel out and watched the wound bleed for a long moment before walking back to the cabinet to retrieve some gauze. "Perhaps you should just take it as a life lesson that no one enjoys being looked at like that. Let's get you wrapped up, hm? Wouldn't want you bleeding all over the sheets, would we?"

Larry tried to say something, but as the muzzle kept his jaw firmly locked in place it came out as a series of pointless grunts. "You realize you're just wasting energy, don't you? I can't understand a word you're saying and no one else can hear you. Do remember our deal, Larry. If you want to live, it's in your best interest to not cause trouble for me. It's been a very long day already and I've only just gotten up. It's in your best interest to stay on my good side."

He was nodding and crying again. All this crying was going to get old quite quickly. Screams were nice, he had always enjoyed the screams and the begging and even the occasional spurt of bargaining. He'd never cared much for the crying. The crying reminded him…

He staggered a bit on his way back to the bed, shoving a hand against his head as if that could stop what was happening inside. He should never have looked, not until he was ready, as if he ever would be. He had too much to do to dive back into it now, but he could already feel it grasping for purchase, wrapping tendrils of memory around him, those words slipping beneath his skin trying to suck him down deeper and deeper still into the darkness of that well.

_"You've been very, very bad, piccolo. And bad boys must be punished. Get in the water."_

_"No! Don't want to, don't want to! Please! It's cold, Papa, no."_

He remembered gasping like a fish in the muck, his clothes heavy and waterlogged. One shoe felt bloated, tied too tight around a swelling, aching foot. The other shoe had been lost to the pond and he could barely feel his toes in their cold wet, slimy sock. He had dragged himself out of the pond with tiny, fat fingers that now pawed uselessly at the cold mud as night fell around him. He didn't have the strength to go any further and no one was coming to help him. He had been bad. No one helped boys who were bad.

_"You wish to leave? To run away from your family, topolino? Then, by all means, try. Try and understand the futility of such nonsense and then crawl back home on your knees."_

_"I didn't-"_

_"Do not lie to me, Salvatore. The only thing worse than being a traitor is being a liar."_

He remembered wandering, cold and alone in the snow, every step forward also a step back, sobbing as he finally emerged to find himself standing on the hill overlooking the house _again_. There was no way out. There never had been. He knew he was lost in illusions, but his own were so weak, flickering frantically around him like a candle in a hurricane, barely enough to protect him and never enough to break through. The only choice was to go home, but he couldn't do that either. If he tried the forest would close around him and swallow him up again. He'd been walking for _hours. _Night was falling fast and the snow kept drifting down around him and he was so very, very cold.

There was blood dripping from his nose and Larry was staring at him again as he shuddered his way free of those grasping memories. He snagged the bottom hem of his t-shirt and wadded it up, bringing it up to press against his nose.

"Damn," he muttered, dropping the gauze on the end of the bed and retreating to the small sink in the corner to clean up. The bleeding had stopped, at least for the time being, and he splashed water over his face to wash away the worst of the blood though it still stained his shirt, damp and dark.

Maybe this was what going mad truly felt like. A life inside you that you couldn't begin to control or understand, a thousand sleeping feelings and half-forgotten memories waiting in the dark to throttle everything you thought you were. What he was, what he had been before, all the tattered souls that made him. Everything was pulling apart at the seams because he'd made the rash, impulsive decision to start digging around, he hoped it was the right decision, but…

He hadn't expected the memories to be from… before. Whatever he'd expected to find it hadn't been… him. That. Had they always been there? Lurking? Waiting? Did it matter? Did it truly matter if he had one more batch of awful memories to add to the quilt? Probably not, but… a knowledge of self was vitally important to an illusionist. If he could survive this he'd probably be stronger than he'd ever been.

It was a rather large if.

He slid a wall of illusion into place between himself and those seeping, clawing bursts of memory. It wouldn't last long and would make the next time he delved into that place worse, but it was the best he could do for the moment. There were things that needed to be done. And, more than that, he wasn't certain how much truth he could stomach all at once. Splashing water on his face once more for good measure, Mukuro turned his attention back to the sobbing man with the bleeding foot.

Once he had finished wrapping Larry's foot with gauze and tucking him in, he handcuffed him to the bed with some additional cuffs he'd found in the cabinet. "Now, you stay here and stay out of trouble, Larry. I really don't particularly want to kill you," Mukuro lied. "I'm going to go check in with your other patients."

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 153  
SON SERVICES  
TRADITORE  
January 25, 2003

**BIRDS**

He awoke suddenly for no immediately obvious reason, but tension prickled across his shoulders forcing him up onto his elbows. His leg was still held in traction, which made the movement more awkward than he would have liked. He had a medicinal drip, nothing truly fantastic, but at least he wasn't in pain and the world was only soft around the edges as he glanced around his curtained space. His hands were a little sticky and the sheets were a bit stiff, but that was to be expected. It had felt like vindication that that self-righteous prick had sent him to a place where he could have a ringside seat from which to hear and see the fruits of labor playing out on a private stage. The Kakimoto boy had flat-lined twice during the surgery and each time he'd let himself imagine how stricken they would be to learn of his demise. He never did die, which had been disappointing to say the least. Plus, the excruciating pain in his knee had tainted some of the joy he'd felt. However, the fantasy had still at least brought a smile to his face.

Once the nurse had finally brought him something for the pain it had been better, of course, far better and he must have dozed off after since it was quiet when he awoke aside from the soft sounds of the various monitoring units. The day that had passed since had been regrettably boring. He'd eaten his meals and enjoyed his medication and had his knee examined and cast, but there had been little in the way of entertainment to be had.

The curtain twitched and shifted aside momentarily, providing a brief glance of the infirmary as the nurse stepped in. He had a clipboard in his hand, a pen behind his ear and ginger hair that stuck up in every direction, untamable. "Hello, Mister…. Birds, is it?"

"Just Birds is fine," he replied, giving the nurse an ingratiating smile. It wouldn't hurt to have a nurse in his pocket, especially if he wanted to finish the Kakimoto boy off while he was indisposed. "How are you this evening?"

"I've been better, but I suppose that's to be expected," the nurse commented, twitching his head to the side so his neck cracked loudly. "It says here you have a dislocated knee. How did that happen?"

And here at last was an opportunity. He'd been reluctant to mention it when he'd been questioned initially, but he'd overheard since that Mukuro Rokudou had been moved down to Solitary so there was no longer a danger from that front if he could assure that he'd stay there until his execution date. "It was horrible," he whimpered, playing for sympathy. "Mukuro Rokudou. He wished me to help him escape, but when I refused… he was displeased. I told him I was simply an old man without the skills to aid in such a plan, that I simply wished to serve my time, but he was enraged. He threatened me and busted my leg, I suppose to show how serious he was."

"Mukuro Rokudou did this to you?" The nurse asked, eyes wide, fingers tight on the clipboard.

"I'm afraid so. He's a beast of a man. Warden Pellegrino would do well to keep him locked up. There's truly no telling what he would do to me if he knew I'd talked. I fear my life would be forfeit."

"Wow, that does sound scary. You know he was in here for a long time before being released into general population," the nurse confessed. He leaned forward, his eyes alight with interest, "He was such a big, scary looking guy; I'm really surprised you managed to get away with only a dislocated kneecap."

Birds smiled, "I'm sure he would have done worse if he'd had the time, but everything was so chaotic. I imagine he wanted to use that window of opportunity for escape. Thank goodness he failed. I shudder to think what a monster like that would do outside in the world. It would almost make me glad for the safety of my cell."

"I suppose so," the nurse replied, plucking the pen from behind his ear and stepping closer. "So, on a scale of one to ten, how would you say your pain is currently?"

"Oh, it's not too terrible," he managed, frowning. There was something about the nurse that made his skin prickle, but he couldn't quite put a finger on what it was. "I would say it's at about a four."

The nurse nodded, a slow smile curling his lips, "Let's see if we can fix that, hm?"

Pain exploded behind his eyes as the nurse stabbed his pen through the cast and into the kneecap below with eerie precision. He screamed, fire flaring through his nerves as he lunged down the bed, trying to reach the pen. He choked and heaved as fingers jabbed against his throat and sent him slamming back down onto the bed. The pain in his leg increased as the nurse grabbed the pen, wrenching it to the side, tearing through plaster and flesh and bone. He sobbed and writhed, unable to escape it or stop it, his fingers tearing at the sheets as he coughed and choked, throat still aching from the blow of moments ago. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the pain was gone and there was a boy standing at his bedside, twirling a pen between his fingers.

He was dark-haired and he seemed to loom over him as he shivered and shook with the aftershocks of remembered pain. His eyes were strange, heterochromatic, one blue and the other red as blood and marked with a glowing symbol. He hadn't seen the eyes, but he recognized the boy vaguely as being the one who'd been sleeping in one of the beds when he'd been brought in.

He smiled tentatively at the boy his brain his cloudy with that strange, brief painful nightmare and the drugs polluting his system. Perhaps he was still dreaming? He wasn't certain. It seemed strange and impossible that the boy standing over him was real. He was a prisoner as well, so he'd been chained to his bed, hadn't he?

"Did they tell you who I am?" The boy asked smiling pleasantly though the expression didn't quite make it to his strange eyes. "I mean, honestly, they have so little to do besides gossip in here. I assume it must have at least been mentioned in passing."

"Of course," he murmured, his voice rough and hoarse, his smile wavering a bit in the face of the boy's question. "You're Mario Rossi."

The boy shrugged, tracing a finger over one of the straps that suspended and immobilized his leg. He tensed and the boy saw the change, his smile widening slightly as he flicked fingers against the metal loops and fastenings.

Tink, tink.

"Yes and no. That is the name on my official intake forms and it's the name on my order of execution, but my real name is something quite different. It is a name with which I believe you are intimately familiar." The smile faded away and he glanced up, gracing a finger through the air between them, leaving a trail of red in its wake to form two words with a flourish.

_Mukuro Rokudou._

This boy was an illusionist.

There was an illusionist in Traditore.

And his name was apparently Mukuro Rokudou.

This was the real Mukuro Rokudou.

His pride stung with the realization.

The information he'd received in those orders had described him as a young, dark-haired man. Purposefully, he realized now, too late, vague enough that it had been a simple enough mistake to believe the information he'd gleaned from the guards on his payroll that Lancia Salvatore was the criminal known as Mukuro Rokudou. He'd known there was a third boy who had come in with the group that had been locked down in solitary, it would have been impossible to miss that with how they'd entered, but none of the information he'd been sent had mentioned that boy even in passing. He'd assumed him to be unimportant, just a pawn and a uniquely unimportant one at that. Just the one letter and the vague description and the equally vague remark that Mukuro Rokudou was not to be harmed under any circumstances, but with such a vague description could he really be blamed for such a mistake.

Mukuro Rokudou.

This little _brat_ was Mukuro Rokudou.

He may have said the name aloud, he may not have, he was certain only that he felt the syllables of that name drop into his stomach like stones pitched into a pond, skipping across the surface to eventually sink and settle cold and heavy in his belly.

Like hell some little brat was going to get the best of him.

He forced an ingratiating smile, "Your reputation proceeds you, I never would have imagined you were a child."

Mukuro tilted his head to the side, his expression curiously blank, "I get that a lot. I would assume based on the state of your knee that you've already met my associate."

"Lancia of Cacciatore."

Mukuro shrugged, "Formerly of Cacciatore. He has a terrible temper, doesn't he? But he is quite good at what he does which is why he works for me and shall continue to do so. Now, whatever did you do to piss him off? I could take a guess, but I'd so much rather here it from you."

"That man is an animal, I didn't…"

"Mr. Birds… I am not particularly fond of liars or people who waste my time. Things will go more smoothly for you if you just tell me the truth."

No, no he didn't believe that was the case at all. He was quite certain he would deeply regret telling Mukuro Rokudou even a single detail of what he'd been up to for the past few months if Lancia Salvatore's reaction were a fair gauge. "He believed I had something to do with the stabbing of one of his… your associates. He was wrong, of course, but didn't seem to dissuade him."

"Is that so?"

"O-Of course," he muttered. Why was this _child_ making him so nervous? He'd stared hardened criminals in the face, tortured them, killed them, and it had bothered him less than attempting to lie to this boy.

"I suppose we'll see, won't we?" Mukuro Rokudou murmured. He didn't blink, he just kept staring at him and it was like watching a cobra poised to strike. He rested his hand lightly against the white plaster of the cast. "Did you know that there are twenty-six bones in the human foot?"

Birds swallowed hard, "Yes."

"Now, I'm going to ask again, and I do hope you can be honest with me this time: Why did Lancia dislocate your knee?"

"I perform a service within the prison. I take and process requests for services related to the prisoners here and relay requests as well. I was hired to test Ken Joshima's tolerance levels. The client provided information about his abilities and they asked that I to find a way to push those abilities to their limit. Kakimoto was an… unfortunate accident. He got in the way."

"Did he," the boy murmured and pain lanced through his leg again, white-hot and terrible, and he was screaming as that pen tore through the cast again and again. Piercing, excruciating and he was certain he was screaming and then he was panting in the aftermath, his cast still stiff and white and whole, one of that boy's hands resting against it while the pen, still clean and new, twirled between the fingers of the other.

"Stop it," he snapped and the boy laughed, clearly pleased by the reaction.

"Stop what? What was that you were saying about Kakimoto?"

"Fine, it wasn't an accident, happy?"

"Getting there," Mukuro replied, unhooking the bag from beside the bed. "Were you trying to kill him?"

"Yes."

"Why? Was that part of the request?"

"It was… _perhaps_… a rather liberal interpretation of the request… what are you doing?"

"I'm taking your pain medication. I should have thought that much was obvious. You won't be needing it."

"…and why is that?" He's ashamed at how shaky his voice sounds, but can't help the terror that threads its way through him. He is practically helpless in the confines of this bed. No weapons within reach, his leg immobilized, and he had never been much of a physical combatant to begin with. And this little bastard… he had enough experience with mist flame users to know that screaming for help wouldn't actually help. Illusionists had a way of turning situations to their advantage. He had little doubt that Mukuro Rokudou would not have confronted him like this if he had any doubts about his ability to control the encounter.

He chuckled again, a soft muffled, sinister sound, "Well, I'm not going to kill you if that's what you think. You're necessary if I want to keep nonsense like this from happening again while we remain here. Plus, I'm quite sure they'll want to deal with you themselves," Mukuro replied calmly, as he replaced one bag with another. "And I'd hate to deprive them of the opportunity. As of this moment you'll be working for me and shall continue to do so until I say otherwise. From now on, any communication you receive goes directly to Lancia or M.M if Lancia is indisposed. You do not respond except on our instruction." A sharp line of pain slid down his arm and he startled, glancing down at the thin bleeding wound on his arm in confusion. He glanced up and Mukuro waggled a strange three-pronged blade in his direction.

He opened his mouth to speak, to ask what that was, what the hell the little punk thought he was doing and found he could not.

_What is this?_

_Why can't I move?_

_This… this wasn't something an illusionist could do, was it?_

All he could do was continue to stare into Mukuro's face, his jaw locked shut, as the boy spoke. He noticed that the mark in Mukuro's eye was different than it had been a moment before and his expression had shifted into a smirk, small and strained.

"I'm afraid I'm far more than simply an illusionist, Mr. Birds. If you think to betray or attempt to conceal something from me, I _will_ know. I will know and I will make you suffer for it in a Hell the likes of which you cannot begin to imagine. Do you believe me when I tell you this? You may speak now."

"Yes," Birds rasped, fear welling up within him at how easily this boy, this child, commanded him. It was mortifying to be manipulated in such a way, as if he were a mere puppet meant only to dance to a master's tune. He could destroy this boy, he knew he could, he just needed to find the correct leverage, the most accurate pressure points. His instructions had been to leave Mukuro Rokudou alone, but that was before, before this humiliation. He would never leave him alone now. Not until he was shattered and broken and sobbing at his feet. Not until he had destroyed everything that Mukuro Rokudou loved and then, only then, would he allow this foolish child to bleed and suffer a slow, agonizing death as he stood over him laughing. Mukuro Rokudou would be his masterpiece, his last great work, and he would take him apart a piece of time and he would enjoy it. And he would start with them, because he had little doubt that those boys were important to him.

Mukuro laughed suddenly, a soft sinister rust-covered sound, "My, my, I do believe you lack a fundamental understanding of your situation. Allow me to clarify things for you."

The sword slid through his hand like a hot knife through butter, burying itself in the bed as pain shot through him, so much more terrible than the illusion of pain Mukuro had caused in his leg and it only grew worse as the blade twisted in the wound.

"You will not think of them. You will not touch them. You will not even look at them unless they address you directly. Every time you picture that event in your mind, you will feel as if needles are being driven through your most intimate areas from stem to stern. You will never derive another ounce of pleasure from their pain. And understand this: if harm comes to anyone I consider an ally even if you are not directly responsible, not only will our deal be null and void, but I will rain down terror and destruction upon you and yours the likes of which you have never seen before and will never see again. I know all your dirty little secrets, Mr. Birds. I will gut your pets and string their entrails like garlands from one end of the prison to the other. You, I will not kill. Instead I will disassemble your body while I use my illusions to sustain your life. I will flay you while you writhe in agony and lay your skin out where you might look upon it as I take you apart piece by filthy piece and redecorate your cell with your grisly remains. Your eyes I shall perch high up, at the edge of a shelf perhaps, so that you might always be able to look out upon the ruin I have made of you while I continue to allow your body to function and thrive long after we have left this place behind until the day the thought of you in pieces fails to amuse me any longer. And, I promise you that it will give me great joy to think of you here in pieces for many, many years to come. Try my patience at your peril, Mr. Birds. I may desire your assistance and that of your grotesque pets in this and my future endeavors, but I can very easily replace you. And if I feel it necessary to do that- if you inconvenience me in that way- the things I will do to you will make that which you have visited upon others seem a blessing in comparison. Do we quite understand each other, Mr. Birds?"

Birds cleared his throat, pretending at a bravado he did not feel. Mukuro Rokudou might look like a child, but appearances could be deceiving. He believed that, whatever he was, he would keep his promises. "O-Of course. Certainly."

"Very good. Now, do you know how to get in contact with your employer?"

Birds laughed, it was a nervous, anxious sound he hardly recognized, "They did supply a contact point by which I meant send them word if something went amiss."

"Fantastic. You're going to send them a message for me."

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 153  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 25, 2003

**M.M**

She woke up with her heart in her throat, because there was someone on the bed with them. She tensed, glaring at the figure for a long moment as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was a guard and he was looming over Ken, fingers sliding over the scar across his nose. Rage filled her head like static, "Look here, you fucking _pedo_, you have ten seconds to get your hands off him before I kick your ass. I don't give a shit if you're a guard, I have absolutely no problem dashing your disgusting head open across this floor."

The guard snorted, a surprised, disbelieving sound.

"My, my, I knew he liked you, I didn't know the affection went both ways," the guard replied, teeth flashing white in the darkness. "That's interesting to know. It may even change my mind about docking your pay for allowing them to be injured in the first place."

She straightened, surprise loosening her coiled muscles, "Mukuro?"

He snorted, "Who else would I be?"

"You _asshole_!" She snapped, the surprise caused by his appearance faded, quickly replaced by the warm flare of anger. She was really kind of tempted to go ahead and just hit him anyway. "Where the _hell_ have you been? Do you have any _idea_ you put them through?"

"Better than you, I imagine," Mukuro replied, shifting to sit on the bed, bringing his features momentarily into the light cast by the dimly lit security lamp overhead. She recognized his weird eyes, she'd seen them often enough over the past few months, but the features were… wrong.

This _wasn't_ a guard.

This was a skinny, dark-haired teenager. She leaned forward, peering at his face through the darkness and he gazed back at her as if the scrutiny was both boring and utterly predictable.

_Crap._

This… this was the actual article. She'd only seen him for a few minutes and her angle had been bad, but she was pretty sure this was the same kid who had come in with Ken and Chikusa that first day.

In their _cell_.

_In a guard's uniform._

Like it was the most normal thing in the world.

"What the hell are you _doing_ here?" She hissed, her eyes darting frantically towards the cell bars and the walkways beyond. "How did you even get out of your _cell_? They're going to catch you!"

And if they caught him in their cell he wasn't the only one that would suffer for it. She and Ken would pay for it as well, they'd be charged as accomplices in his escape. Nevermind that he clearly wasn't attempting to escape much of anything at the moment, they wouldn't give a damn about that. All they'd care about was that he'd broken their security somehow and they'd want to punish all of them to serve as an example to others.

They were _so _screwed.

"They won't catch me," Mukuro answered easily as Ken snuffled in his sleep, burrowing in against Mukuro's bent knee. He tilted his head to the side and suddenly she was looking at a completely different person, one of the newer guards on the block whose name she hadn't caught.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sudden revelation. He was….

Then in the next moment he was himself again, the uniform too bulky for his thin frame. "Though if you don't keep it down, I will have little choice but to eliminate your ability to _speak_."

"Oh, bite me, pretty boy," M.M. snapped, sitting up and shifting down to the corner of Ken's bunk well out of easy reach. Not that it would matter. She could be all the way across the damn cell and it wouldn't be far enough away if he wanted to hurt her. Now that she was paying attention she could see how badly the guard's uniform fit him, that his feet were bare. That he actually looked kind of ridiculous, like a child playing dress up in his father's clothes. It would have been laughable if the implications weren't so terrifying.

How the hell was he even… there wasn't anything to do except ask him the question burning through her, because she absolutely needed to _know_: "How the hell are you even _here_? Everyone knows they take illusionists to Vendicare. A place like Traditore isn't equipped to handle people like you. How did you escape notice?"

"I don't advertise," Mukuro replied dryly, unperturbed by her reaction.

"Even so, how are you not in the ranking book? Who _are_ you guys?"

"The ranking book?"

"What the… _seriously_? How is it that you assholes spend that much time killing the mafia and yet you still somehow don't actually know dick _about_ the mafia?" M.M. rolled her eyes, still watching him cautiously. She'd never met a mist flame user herself, but she'd heard enough stories about them to know better than to relax her guard around one. Not all were illusionists and even those that were varied pretty drastically in terms of power and ability, but she never heard anything good about any of them. "Oh, nevermind, like you'd really tell me anyway. How's Glasses?"

"Chikusa?"

"No, the other subordinate of yours that got stabbed and bled out all over the floor."

"I'm sorry, do you really think after all that's happened that I'm in the mood for sass?"

Oh. Right. There was the anger again. That made things much simpler.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you think this was sass? No, this is what I sound like when I'm pissed off, you absolute _dick_. Ken's been sick and getting sicker for weeks and the second you leave to do whatever bullshit errand you decided you absolutely had to run, Birds started harassing them like he was trying to medal in the Asshat Olympics. That's a hell of a coincidence. And what's more is that he's _good _at it, like uncanny good. Far, far better than he has any right to be. You really expect me to believe he just figured out, all on his own just from watching them from afar for a few months, all the most effective places to hit them? I live with them. I've seen them freaking _naked_ and I know less about them than he does. I had no damn idea that Ken's ears were that sensitive or that Chikusa was so psychotically invested in keeping Ken safe and with him that he'd rather alienate him than risk telling him that Birds was sending him creepy, disgusting little love notes. He'd rather tell _me_ than risk Ken flying off the handle._ Me._ He doesn't even freaking _like_ me much less _trust_ me."

"If you have a point, I would hurry up and make it if I were you lest you exhaust my patience, Marie." Mukuro replied, his voice full of menace and his expression lost in the shadow cast by the brim of his borrowed uniform hat.

She hated that he called her that.

Which, of course, was probably why the bastard did it.

"Sure, let's just get to it then. I don't buy for a hot second that there are a lot of people that know them that well and I saw Lancia's face earlier when they went down so I _know_ it wasn't him. So, what the _fuck_ did you do?"

Mukuro smiled, slow and sinister and she stiffened, sliding backwards instinctively off the bed in order to put some extra distance between them even though she knew, intellectually, that it wouldn't help. Not with an illusionist. If they could see you, they could hurt you, after all.

What the hell had she even been thinking confronting him like that? She'd intended to be subtle about it, just needle him about it a little to see if he was responsible, but he'd just been so… ugh. Clearly idiocy was contagious or something because living with those two had made her _stupid_. Her instincts for self-preservation used to be much, much better than this.

"You're a very intelligent girl, Marie. I'm sure you've managed to cobble together some version of the truth just fine without a full confession of my many sins. "

"Mukuro?" Ken's voice is groggy and she felt the heavy weight of Mukuro's gaze vanish as he turned the full force of his attention to Ken. She might as well have ceased to exist for all he seemed to care in that moment.

"Hey. He's going to be fine," he murmured immediately. "It was just a scratch."

"_Mukuro_," Ken his voice was still vague and dark and slow like molasses, but he clawed his way across the bed in slow painstaking movements until he was able to wrap his arms around Mukuro's waist, bury his face against his stomach. Mukuro tensed, his hands hovering awkwardly over Ken's back as if he were suddenly unsure what to do with them. "Mukuro, I'm sorry," he mumbled, his words stumbling, slow and uncertain. "There was… there was so much blood, it was my fault, I didn't…"

"Ken, no," he murmured, his hands finally settling in Ken's hair, tugging him back a little. It looked painful, but Ken didn't complain. "No, _no_. _Look_ _at me, you idiot._ You didn't do anything wrong, this wasn't your fault, _none_ of it."

"You don't… should have… fucking _useless_," Ken mumbled, the words slurring together as he struggled to sit up and back as if that might make a difference. "Fucking useless and I…."

He weaved drunkenly as he finally managed to reach a sitting position only to almost immediately fall back over. Mukuro managed to snag his bare shoulder, slowing his descent, fingers slipping against damp, sweaty skin and he cursed, raising a hand to his weird red eye and there was a flare of light, as flame ignited around him, burning bright for a moment before settling to a steadier gleam as Mukuro caught and steadied Ken, the difficulty he'd been having holding him a moment before vanishing.

Ken's voice was woozy and pained and he was still weaving a bit even with Mukuro steadying him and supporting his weight. "Wha-what the fuck is wrong with me?"

"At a guess, your senses have been over-stimulated. We should have told you that it was happening, Chikusa and I both knew, but we didn't want to make it worse when we thought there was little we could do to make it better. We still probably should have told you. _I_ should have told you. That revolting little man Lancia hurt was hired to make it worse, to kill you eventually if he could manage, I think. You'll feel better once you've had time to rest now that he's out of the picture."

"Lancia hurt him?"

"Mm hm," Mukuro replied, "I'm sure he would have liked to break him into bits and pieces and throw him out a window, but he settled for dislocating a kneecap. It must hurt a great deal judging from all the sobbing after I cut off from his pain medication."

"_Good_," Ken replied viciously. "Fuck that guy."

Then, quieter and more serious, maybe even a little fearful, "Chikusa's really okay?"

"He will be," Mukuro murmured. "You should rest."

"Kay, _Mom_," Ken sighed. Mukuro's face twisted up in a grimace and he dropped Ken like a bad habit, allowing him to flop back on the bed. Ken yelped in surprise, a burst of laughter escaping as his head bounced against the mattress.

Ken smiled a little as he finally noticed her presence, he looked half-drunk, his eyelids at half-mast his words still slurry around the edges. "Hey, M. When did you get here?"

"I've been here," she commented, prodding his forehead irritably. "Go back to sleep already. The adults are talking and you're still pumped to the gills with tranquilizers."

"Hey, I'm an adult," Ken griped, yawning hugely. "Chikusa's okay?" He asked again, his voice anxious, craning his neck to look in Mukuro's direction.

"Of course," Mukuro huffed, exasperated, doing something to Ken's bare foot that caused him to flinch and laugh again. "He's sleeping comfortably as we speak, so should you be."

Ken twitched the foot away, still smiling, "Ticklish."

"I know," Mukuro replied and the thin smile softened his features. "Get some rest and I might even lie to him and tell him you're doing well. That you're recovering nicely and you don't at all look like you'd get your ass kicked by a stiff breeze."

"Okay," Ken yawned, settling back down and closing his eyes obediently, Chikusa's hat clutched his hands and tucked up against his chest. "That'd be good… he worries, you know. Missed you… glad you're here."

"Yes, I know, you're ridiculous," Mukuro looked exhausted as he patted Ken's foot. "Sleep."

A few minutes later, Ken's soft snores broke the silence between them and M.M. yawned, patting his hair absently before glancing up at Mukuro who had a hand wrapped tight around Ken's bare ankle.

"Okay, I don't get it," she commented, frowning at him. "You care about them."

"I care about myself, Marie." Mukuro replied easily, his gaze still trained on Ken. "They are a part of me, it's as simple as that."

"Sure, okay, whatever," she wasn't sure how else to respond to that comment or even what the heck it was supposed to _mean_. "What I mean is that you… why would you hurt them if you care about them?"

"Why indeed?" Mukuro replied, his voice soft and wry.

No point in beating around the bush about it. "You're nuts, you know that, right?"

"Probably," Mukuro replied easily. "So, knowing that, I'm going to give you a choice, Marie Malone, because I do actually like you. Well, I don't_ like_ you, but I don't hate you and for me that's practically the same thing."

"Yeah? Well, I think _you're _vile."

"I'm sure. So, I _was_ just going to kill you once you'd outlived your usefulness," Mukuro began and she felt her stomach sink. "Ken has a big mouth and, as you said, you've been in close quarters with them for months. I'm not altogether comfortable with how much you know about them, about us, about me, but… you were legitimately concerned about them. I didn't realize the… friendship went both ways, but I can see that it does." He said friendship like it was a dirty word which wasn't the least bit comforting. "So, instead of simply killing you, I'm going to give you a choice. You can die or I can mark you. I understand it's not much of a choice, but it's really the best offer you're going to get."

She cleared her throat once and then again before she was confident that she'd be able to respond without stumbling over her words. "What do you mean by 'mark'?"

He held up a three-pronged sword that had most definitely not been there a moment before. "Just a scratch, you'll barely even feel it."

And it dawned on her all at once what that probably meant, what he was really offering, "Oh, gross, this is going to let you use me the way you use them, isn't it?"

Mukuro inclined his head, "Gold star for situational analysis, Marie Malone."

"Would you stop calling me that? It's irritating."

He ignored her again.

She was getting really tired of that.

"Let me see your hand, hold it out for me." It didn't sound like a request or a suggestion and she frowned, but held her hand out anyway. She didn't want to die and she had no doubt he'd been serious about that. Plus, he paid well, really well, and she wasn't willing to give that up just yet so killing him was out… at least for the moment. He scratched the blade across the back of her hand; it was sharp enough and shallow enough that she barely even felt it.

Blood beaded up along the scratch and she wiped a thumb across it frowning, "I don't feel any…."

She trailed off as she felt a shiver run down her spine and a voice, his voice, speak softly in her head.

_And there we are._

It felt cold and invasive and terrible, a violation and she grit her teeth against the feeling and thought very hard about stabbing him in his stupid red eye with his own stupid freaking sword.

Mukuro smiled at her thin and insincere, "My, my, but that's hardly polite."

"You're creepy as _hell_, you know that, right?" She snapped, hugging her arms around herself as she felt that inky black feeling retreat and dissolve leaving only an uncomfortable memory behind. "That was just revolting."

"It's been mentioned," Mukuro replied, almost cheerfully. "Anything else you need to get off your chest?"

"Just this: If you ever, and I mean _ever_, pull that puppetmaster bullshit on me without my permission, Mukuro Rokudou, I _will_ kill you. It might take me a month or a year or ten, but I eventually I _will_ find a way to kill you unless you kill me first. So if you're ever in the mood to top yourself and find that you lack the balls to get the job done, you now have a viable backup option."

"Noted," Mukuro chuckled, because apparently she was hilarious.

He was just the absolute _worst _even if he did pay well.

"Glad I could make your day just that little bit brighter, psycho," she replied huffily.

"Now that that's settled, what was that you were saying before about a ranking book?"

"Forget it, I'd rather stick my head in gasoline and light it on _fire_ than talk to you anymore tonight. I'm going to sleep," she huffed, brushing a hand through Ken's hair before stomping off to her own bed. She hesitated briefly as she jerked back the blanket, "You're going to stay with him, right?"

"Yes. He doesn't like to sleep alone."

He just sounded so… _fond_. She'd been so damn sure that he'd had something to do with what happened to them, she still kind of was since he'd practically even admitted it and yet….

Whatever.

This had been a long day in a series of really long days and she still couldn't shake off how wrong and bizarre that dark, cold, oily presence in her head had felt. She couldn't think about this crap right now. She pulled her blanket up over her head, burrowing down as Ken's snoring cut through the air, loud and familiar, drowning out everything else.

It seemed like it had been a really long time since she'd heard it for more than a few moments at a time.

Eventually the familiar sound lulled her into an uneasy sleep.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: UNKNOWN  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
?

**KEN**

There was water on his skin a minute ago, cold and terrifying and strangers' hands on his skin, holding him up, holding him under the flow and strangers' voices cursing as he tried to struggle and found he couldn't, that his body wouldn't move the way he wanted it to. He whimpers instead, whimpers and mumbles pleading words that barely sound like anything and then he's in a bed and he's too warm, far too warm, like his skin his super heated, too tight and his throat is dry.

He thought he woke up to the familiar smell of death and darkness and threw himself into it, winding around it, trying to get closer, to curl up inside it where it's safe and cool. Because there's something he desperately doesn't want to know, to think about. He's pretty sure there is conversation, but he remembers nothing of what was said, only that at the end he slipped back to sleep as if he were sliding into a warm bath.

There are nightmares.

Blood. Always blood.

Almonds.

Chikusa's skin cool beneath his grasping hands, pulsing warmth that spilled over his fingers.

He heard occasional snatches of conversation bleeding through the black, his eyelids too heavy to open, but none of the words make sense.

That he'd woken again minutes or hours later, more lucid and with the familiar smell of Mukuro still heavy in the air even though he was alone. He squinted into the dim light of morning, distantly aware that he was sad, that there was something really wrong, but then sleep reclaimed him and he sunk beneath the surface once more, ignorant and beyond caring.

Time passed.

He woke up and Mukuro was there, closer than he'd usually allow. He must look really awful if Mukuro was letting him linger this close to him. That was kind of funny. Maybe they were taking shifts taking care of him like they'd done for Mukuro on the boat that was….

His breath stuttered out on a sob as the truth of Chikusa's absence bobbed to the surface of his slow, shitty brain.

"He's okay,"Mukuro commented and it was weird hearing his voice, it'd been so long that it made him sniffle and curl a little closer. Mukuro's hand was locked tight around his ankle.

The same ankle Chikusa had gripped when they'd been sitting on the floor in that gross bathroom stall, like they were both trying to anchor him to them, keep him when they'd been the ones slipping away.

"Mukuro, Chikusa…" he whispered, forcing his reluctant body into a sitting position. It hurt to talk, his throat and voice made rough like sandpaper by too much sleep and too little water or something. Mukuro prodded him in the temple with the cool plastic of a water bottle.

He ignored it and Mukuro sighed, tossing it into his lap with a scowl, "I _know_. It's okay. He's okay. Still sleeping, he lost a lot of blood, but he's going to be fine. Drink your damn water."

He stared down dumbly at the water bottle for what seemed like a really long time before finally picking it up and twisting off the lid and taking a sip. It made him cough and the water splashed icy cold over his fingers and soaked into his pant leg and the blanket beneath as he squeezed the bottle too hard. He pounded his free hand against his chest as if that might stifle the hacking cough.

It didn't.

He managed another couple of sips in between coughing fits before twisting the cap back on and rubbing his damp hand against his equally damp pants. It was really cold. Funny how he hadn't minded the cold so much when Chikusa was there.

"I was too slow," he confessed, tossing the water bottle onto the bed beside him. "I wasn't paying attention and he…."

"It wasn't your fault." The sudden grip of Mukuro's fingers against his chin as he jerked him up to look into his face was as tight as it was surprising. Mukuro's nails needed a cut and they dug painfully into the line of his jaw and into the ankle he was still holding as well, sharp and unforgiving. "_None_ of this was your fault."

It was hard to meet his gaze. It never had been before, but everything felt wrong and strange. The words tasted gritty and bitter as he muttered them brokenly, "He could have… _you know_."

"I know," Mukuro choked on the words, his voice cracking. It felt like something in him broke at that sound and he lunged forward, wrapping his aching arms around Mukuro, ignoring his grunt of protest.

Words spilled from his lips, panic and guilt like a cup overfilled, choking him as he dug his fingers into Mukuro's back, "I'm sorry. I'll be better. I know I fucked up, but I'll be better. I promise. I can handle it here. I'll do better. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. Don't cry. Please don't cry."

"I'm not going to cry, stupid. And stop apologizing, you're giving me a headache,"Mukuro snapped, his voice tense, the thick sound of a moment ago already gone, but that just made him tighten his hold. Mukuro was good at covering. He always had been.

"Yeah, okay," he snuffled into Mukuro's stomach.

"You're an idiot."

"Yeah. It's really funny, isn't it? You killed that guard to let Chikusa stay with me and he'd have been safer there. He'd have been better off without me."

"I swear I will _muzzle_ you if you don't shut up with that nonsense. Also, stop hugging me already. You're getting snot all over my uniform."

Ken laughed, drawing back as the laugh turned into another hacking cough and he rubbed at his nose with his sleeve, "Shut the fuck up."

"You shut the fuck up," Mukuro replied, offering him a ghost of his usual smirk. "Do you want to see him?"

"Of course, I want to fucking see him," Ken managed between coughs.

"Then go back to sleep, idiot, concentrate on getting better. I refuse to sneak you into the infirmary if you can't go five minutes without trying to hack up a lung."

"But…."

"Shut up. No, I don't care. Not until you better. He'll just worry if you're in bad shape. He'll brood. It's annoying. Just get some sleep. We'll talkmore later."

And sleep swept over him, swift and certain and he didn't even have time to curse at him for it before he was gone.

Time passed.

Hours? A day? Maybe two? Three? Five? He wasn't sure. Sometimes he woke up and he was pretty with it. He could hold conversations and he only broke down a little when he remembered Chikusa wasn't there and why. Other times his head swam and his vision filled with static and there was a ringing in his ears that had him scratching at them until Mukuro lashed his arms to the bed to prevent it. For the most part, the days and nights sort of blurred together, the scenes disjointed and strange, just flashes of drinking water from those cheap plastic bottles Mukuro kept smuggling in, picking at his food at meals, stumbling into the bathroom to piss and ending up sitting on the floor of the stall until Mukuro came and fished him out, helped him stumble back to their cell.

That last one seemed to happen a lot.

He had a lot of memories of Mukuro in a guard uniform that often smelt like chicken soup and some flowery detergent and hung huge and weird on his skinny body. Mukuro's hair was longer than it had ever been and he often shoved it up inside the hat, but sometimes he didn't and it was kind of pretty the way it hung soft and loose around his shoulders and he'd found himself petting it more than once as they stumbled back to his new cell which was much, much farther away from the bathroom than the old cell had been, but at least this cell didn't smell like rancid ass or whatever.

"I like your hair," he'd murmured, feeling like he'd said that before. Probably a bunch of times, his head felt like it had that one time he'd been tossed into a car headfirst. Was that in New York? Spain, maybe? He wasn't sure, but it had definitely happened at least once. Maybe twice. "It's nice like this."

"It's a pain, I should cut it," Mukuro sighed, though they both knew he wouldn't. He'd pin it back, pin it up so it flared across the back of his head like a frond, but he wouldn't cut it.

He must have passed out between one step and the next because it seemed like seconds later and he was back in his cell and Mukuro was gone. There was a lot of light so it was probably the middle of the day.

M.M. sat curled up beside him playing solitaire. When she noticed he was awake she offered him a thin smile, "Hey there."

His lips felt dry, chapped, they stuck together and his throat ached. He grimaced and rubbed at it irritably and M.M. shook a bottle of water at him. He nodded and tried, unsuccessfully, to push himself up enough to grab it from her.

She snorted and shook her head. "Don't worry about it," she commented, sliding down the length of the bed to help him sit up and sip at the bottle. "You're looking a little better."

"What day is it?" He asked finally in a stranger's rough, grumbling voice after guzzling down half the bottle. He immediately regretted drinking all that water as his stomach protested, gurgling irritably. He lay back down and closed his eyes hoping that would help calm it.

It didn't really work, but since it didn't get immediately worse he was calling it a win.

"Why? You got somewhere to be?" She replied, shrugging.

"No, I… I don't know. Was Mukuro here? It seems like he was just here. My pillow smells like him." She didn't answer immediately so after a while, he opened at his eyes to squint at her, make sure she was still there. That he'd actually asked the question aloud rather than just thinking it. "What?"

"Sorry," she looked hesitant, he wasn't sure why. "Yeah, he's here most nights."

He nodded, he'd thought so; he remembered little snippets of conversation here and there, the dark, cool, earthy scent of him that lingered on the sheets. Mostly he remembered the feel of Mukuro's fingers easing through his hair and murmured words meant to comfort, the feeling of being safe, being home. He really missed Mukuro when he was gone, it wasn't so bad when Ch….

".…lusionist," M.M. commented, derailing his train of thought and he blinked at her slowly, realizing she'd been speaking to him for a while and he hadn't heard any of it except the word 'illusionist'. He only knew one of those, so she was probably still talking about Mukuro. Probably.

"Whozawazit?" He asked sleepily, rubbing a hand over his face.

M.M. sighed, exasperated, "Mukuro. He's an illusionist."

"Yeah? So?" He replied, yawning and confused. Why were they talking about obvious things? That seemed stupid.

Another sigh, "I asked if you knew how he'd managed to duck being ranked."

"Ranked?" He knew the word, but that wasn't… he was probably more fucked up than he thought. Fucked up? What had he…? "What do illusions have to do with football?"

M.M. rolled her eyes and pushed him back against the bed. He went without protest, "Nevermind, I'll ask you when you're more with it."

"Huh? What…" Ken replied, frowning. Why wasn't she making sense? Why was everything so hard to understand? Was everything usually this confusing? And why did it feel like he was missing…

"Where's Chikusa?" He asked jolting upright, gaze dodging around the room looking for a sign of him. "Kappa?"

Her expression softened a bit and it made him feel sick, curl his knees up against his chest, his breath shuddering as he followed her gaze to the bloodstained hat clutched in his lap. He hadn't… hadn't even realized he was…

"Oh… right."

Chikusa pushing him out of the way, blood on his hands.

Blood _everywhere_.

"He's okay," she said hurriedly. "He'll have to stay in the infirmary for a while, but he'll be fine. Mukuro's looking after him so you don't…"

He nodded, numb. She kept talking. He didn't really hear her.

He'd had nightmares like this. Like that.

M.M. sighed, "Just… try to get some sleep. Shouldn't be much longer till that crap works its way out of your system. You'll feel better then."

He thought he managed another nod. He wasn't sure.

He probably laid back down at some point, must have fallen back asleep, but he didn't remember it, not really. He remembered Mukuro being there again. Remembered the press of Mukuro's palms against his face, almost painful, how angry he looked, saying the words as if he'd long grown tired of repeating them: "It _wasn't_ your _fault_."

He's pretty sure that isn't true, but he doesn't tell Mukuro that.

Mukuro looked really worn out.

He knows something is wrong with him. That something is strange, off. He can hear him mumbling to himself sometimes when he wakes from a nightmare before Mukuro sinks him back down into the depths of sleep again.

_"…aren't you running?"_

_"…until you get better and stop pronouncing words like you're reading a dictionary while caught in a spin cycle."_

He remembered those words, remembered hearing them before.

He wants to ask why Mukuro is saying them again now, but he falls back to sleep before he can get his mouth to cooperate enough to do the job.

Times passes.

He wakes up, Mukuro is asleep and there are _snakes_ in the bed with them. A dozen, maybe more, curled near them, seeking warmth. There was a soft hissing protest when he shifted and he stilled, fingers curling tight against Mukuro's wrist, the only part of him within easy reach.

"Mukuro," he croaked, reluctant to chance raising his head or shaking Mukuro. The snakes could be illusions or they could just as easily be actual snakes, the sort he could summon up with the beast realm thing. He couldn't smell them, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. His senses were kind of all over the place still. "Mukuro."

"Hm?" Mukuro replied, sleepy, his eyes slitting open to stare down at him blearily.

"Snakes."

"Oh," he blinked at them, opening his eyes wider and reaching out to stroke the head of one curled between them, perilously close to Ken's arm. Ken could see the symbol of the Beast Realm in stark black lines across Mukuro's eye as he did, which he supposed answered that question. "Do you mind them?" Mukuro asked, voice still thick with sleep.

"Nah, it's fine as long as they don't bite me when I move," he replied, yawning and shifting a little closer, ignoring the hissing now that Mukuro was awake. It wasn't like it was the first time he'd woken up to find snakes and other creepy crawly crazy shit hanging around. It had just been a really long time and since he'd never slept this close to Mukuro he hadn't really been this involved with them. "You okay?"

"Not really," Mukuro replied, reaching out to thread fingers through Ken's hair in a way that seemed to have become a habit. He couldn't help but wonder if he was doing it on purpose, these little things that Chikusa used to do. If this was a way to calm him, keep him from freaking the fuck out and kicking the door down and tearing through the prison to find him. Not that he had the energy to do that, just… sometimes he dreamed about it. And so maybe Mukuro knew. "Don't worry about it, it's fine, I've got it handled."

"Mukuro…."

"Go back to sleep, Ken. Ask me again when you can take care of yourself for a change," Mukuro snapped, patience wearing thin faster than usual.

And sleep he did.

The next time he woke up, he was tired, but everything was clear and he felt… okay. Not great, but okay for the first time in what felt like forever. His head didn't ache and it wasn't spinning. His muscles weren't even screaming bloody murder. He was… okay. He rolled over onto his back and opened his eyes to stare up at the bunk above him in the dim light of early morning. He could still smell Mukuro and, far more faintly Chikusa from the blood on the hat that was shoved in his pillow.

If he closed his eyes, he knew that he could almost pretend that Chikusa wasn't gone. That he was close, not close enough to touch, but just having stepped out so his scent lingered on the pillow, but… what would be the point? Pretending didn't make anything better. It wouldn't make him forget that he had failed to protect him. That if it wasn't for Mukuro, Chikusa would be dead and gone and he wouldn't have anyone to blame but himself and the dead fuckhead who put the blade in his stomach.

That he'd spent all that time wearing that fucking cartridge like it made him bulletproof or could keep them safe, but when it really mattered it had been totally fucking useless. _He_ had been totally useless because he wasn't able to wear it and even if he had been… he'd still have probably been too slow. Still have probably missed it. He'd been there, right there, and it hadn't mattered at all. It was hard to escape the fact that he'd been so caught up worrying about liking Chikusa that he'd forgotten to protect Chikusa.

He was the fucking _worst_.

And Chikusa… Chikusa was an _asshole_.

Knowing him, morbid obsessive bastard that he was sometimes, he'd probably gone over the possibility of someone attacking them in his head again and again. He'd probably rehearsed what might happen and how he could turn the situation around so that Ken survived no matter what, run through scenario after scenario. Like that was totally the right thing for him to do. Thinking only about keeping him alive and never fucking mind that he was the one out of the two of them that could definitely survive a wound like that.

He was going to kick his _ass_ after he healed up.

And then… and then they were going to fucking talk about this shit. Actually fucking talk about it, because if they just kept going like this, they'd get themselves killed and Mukuro would be left all alone to fend for himself. And that wasn't okay. That was _bullshit_.

They were both so fucking stupid.

But that didn't mean they had to stay that way.

**-ooo-**

**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 147  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
January 31, 2003

**M.M.**

"Hey, do you want me to wash your…" She cocked her head to the side; staring at Ken where he was unbuttoning the uniform shirt he wore, clearly lost in thought. His expression was strange and serious and so utterly, utterly unlike him that it gave her pause. She watched in silence as he slid his shirt off, tossing it carelessly over the bench. His movements were loose, fluid and efficient and he seemed completely unperturbed by the shower running behind him, slapping against the tiles to splash up across the legs of his pants.

This was so obviously _not_ Ken.

Ken twitched and flinched and shuffled when he got anywhere near the shower _room _much less the actual stalls. The last few days she had found him sitting on the bench still half-dressed long after she'd already finished her own ice-cold shower staring at the empty stall in front of him like it was going to eat him. She'd had to harass him through at least making a cursory effort at wiping himself down with a towel each time and he'd just shaken his head when she'd suggested washing his hair. In the end she'd ended up using her hands as a cup to catch and pour water over his head, soaking his hair and shoulders and shirt. It didn't get him clean, really, but it kept the guard off their backs. It was a process that had given her a newfound sympathy and respect for Chikusa who had to have the patience of a freaking saint not to have flipped out dealing with the weird aversion or phobia or whatever this was for months without compliant. It was one thing to like Ken, it was another thing entirely to coddle him through his bullshit each and every day for the better part of a week while he moved through his life like the lights were on, but no one was home. He'd been different that morning, better, more with it, but that still didn't explain why he was acting nothing like…

Wait a damn minute.

"Mukuro?" She asked finally, tentatively.

Ken glanced up at her with Mukuro's eyes, utterly unperturbed, "What?"

"What the heck are you doing?"

He rolled his eyes as if that were the stupidest question he'd ever heard… and maybe it was. "I'm playing backgammon, clearly."

She ignored both his smartass remark and the little spike of gratitude that she probably wasn't going to have to coax Ken through washing his hair today. "Okay, I meant: why are you here? Possessing him?"

"That should be obvious. I told him that he either needs to wash the hair or I'll find a way to shave it all off, it's really disgusting. This is the compromise. Would you rather I pretended I was Ken so we could skip this conversation?"

"No, I've seen you do that for the guards and it's super creepy."

"Then mind your business," Mukuro replied, shooing her away with a wave of his hand as he went back to removing his… Ken's… clothes.

"So, does this mean we're shower buddies now? Is this going to be a regular, ongoing thing?"

"It's always been a regular, ongoing _thing_, you just didn't notice it previously because it didn't actually impact you," Mukuro glanced up and cocked one of Ken's eyebrows at her. "I assume it was the lack of hysterics that gave it away?"

"A bit," M.M. replied, her fingers hesitating in the process of unfastening the buttons on her shirt. "Your boy _really_ doesn't like water."

"He doesn't like showers," Mukuro corrected absently, shucking his undershirt and tossing it neatly on the bench beside the uniform shirt. "He deals with water just fine."

"Right," she frowned, a little disconcerted that he was being so chatty after last time. "So, um, are you as gay as those boys or do I need to be concerned?"

Mukuro had paused, standing frozen beside the bench as if he'd lost his train of thought or he was listening to something she couldn't hear. His fingers, Ken's fingers, tapped restlessly against his sides and each second of silence that passed made her a little more nervous, a little more unsettled.

"Hello?" She asked finally, somehow managing to keep the tremble out of her voice, but it was a close thing.

"If you're asking if I'm attracted to you, the answer is no." Mukuro replied finally, as if nothing odd had happened at all. He sat down neatly on the bench and began unlacing Ken's boots.

She released a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding and went to work on the buttons, a little annoyed to find that while she was able to keep the tremble from her voice, it lingered in her fingers. She kept talking, chattering, unwilling to let silence fall between them again. "Huh. Okay. So, is your entire gang gay? Is Lancia? Is that why you were so hip on recruiting me? At least we'll have a unique theme, I guess."

She was pretty sure that she was failing miserably at masking her discomfort based on the sardonic look he shot her at that.

"No and none of your business and no. I was _hip_ on recruiting you because you are a skilled assassin with a proven track record in a prime location with a fair amount to lose should I feel you've not been performing to standard. Plus, Ken likes you. I have _no_ idea _why_." He said _hip_ the way she imagined a cantankerous grandfather would say _hip,_ as if he couldn't quite believe the crazy lingo the kids were using these days.

She wished he would hurry the hell up and finish up so he would leave.

Mukuro was creepy and watching him moving around in Ken's body just made him creepier. She'd noticed it before, but somehow it was worse watching him today. The eye color change was weird enough, but the less obvious things were just as disconcerting: the changes in the way he carried himself, the way he stood. The way he'd pause sometimes in the middle of a movement as if he were lost in thought or listening to something she couldn't hear and then pick back up like nothing happened.

It was kind of like watching bad performance art.

So creepy.

"So, the gay thing is just a coincidence?" She asked aloud, fidgeting nervously as she flipped on the water in her shower stall and stepping to the side to allow the water to warm from 'fuck no' to 'freezing balls' before stepping back out of her stall to wait.

Mukuro stowed the last of Ken's clothes on the bench and walked into the shower stall beside hers, his flicked his gaze in her direction and he shrugged, "That you're gay? Yes."

Silence fell between them and she found herself fidgeting again as Mukuro stepped beneath the water without even a hint of hesitation.

It was like he didn't even feel the cold.

So fucking _creepy_.

"So, you're not then?" She asked, beating the dead horse, because the silence was still incredibly disconcerting.

Mukuro sighed so heavily that she could hear it over the shower spray, "You're aware that you are only allowed a limited amount of time to shower, correct? Why are you wasting it asking me stupid questions?"

"It's my shower time, I can spend it how I like," she answered tartly. It was a perfectly valid question and one that she had absolutely no intention of answering.

"Are you just going to go on and on about this until I answer you?" He inquired, walking back out of the shower stall to fish a shampoo bottle out of the little basket on the bench.

"As I've mentioned, you get the questions for free," M.M. replied, shoving a hand under the water to test the temperature and cursing softly when she found it was as warm as it ever got. She ducked under the flow, wetting her hair down quickly before stepping back out to scrub shampoo into her own short hair, shivering. "So, which is it?"

"I'm not anything in particular. I don't... have any interests in that area." He replied finally, turning away, voice stiff and obviously uncomfortable.

She was kind of surprised he chose to answer at all.

"At all?"

"At all."

"Huh," she replied, her mind turning over this new piece of information and trying to make it fit with everything else she knew. "So, the possession thing… you do infiltration work with that, right?"

"Yes."

"How does that work exactly? I mean, I'm looking at you doing it now, but I don't really get it. Can you just make people's bodies do anything you want if you're the one driving?"

"That's really no concern of yours," he replied blandly, stepping back into his shower stall and out of sight as she did the same. "Mind your own business, Marie."

She frowned, irritated by the dismissal, "Actually, since you can possess me now as well, I think it's _absolutely_ my business. So, what's the deal? I mean, obviously, you can possess someone and make them do something they wouldn't normally do, I mean Ken would never jump in that shower on his own so it stands to reason that you could…"

She paused, feeling a little sick as the full implications of that rolled up and around in her mind. If he could do that, he could do anything, couldn't he? He could make a person, or more specifically a person's body do anything he wanted. She wrinkled her nose at the thought. "Oh, _ew_… killing people is one thing, but that's just… tell me you don't…."

She stopped dead mid-sentence jerking her body instinctually backwards as a rush of displaced air swept across her throat. Her back hit the wall hard and she opened her eyes to find herself staring at the three-pronged sword that had been plunged through the space where she'd been a moment before. Ken's body was bent around the shower wall, holding the long handle and glaring at her with Mukuro's mismatched eyes. His hair was still covered in shampoo, sticking up in odd angles, but the expression on his face somehow made what might have otherwise been a funny sight not the least bit amusing. She swallowed hard, her fingers curling and digging at the tiles at her back.

"Shut _up_. Just stop. Fucking. _Talking_," he bit off each of the words in a voice that was harsh and shaken. Fine tremors made the point of the spear bob and weave as it lingered in the air between them. His eyes were wild, wide with something like panic. "I don't… I don't do _that_. I've _never_ done that. So just _drop it._"

It occurred to her, belatedly, that if her reflexes had been even a smidge slower she'd be bleeding out on the floor of this shitty prison shower room with Mukuro's sword in her throat.

"Right. No more sex talk. Got it. Sorry," she managed, nodding quickly.

Message sent and received, the sword vanished and Ken's body slid back into the adjoining stall to finish showering. She could breathe again, though she couldn't bring herself to take her eyes off the divider again until Mukuro stepped out and began toweling off.

His movements were stiff, jerky. It was almost like watching a puppet move on tangled strings. He pressed a hand against his forehead, murmuring something softly enough that she could quite hear what he was saying, just the sound of his voice.

She shut the water off and stepped cautiously towards the bench to retrieve her own towel.

That close she could make out a handful of words, mumbled as they were, "…can't, it's too…"

His shoulders hunched and for a second he was still and she froze, body tense and ready to leap further away if need be. Then his hands clutched at the t-shirt he held in his hands, nails piercing the fabric with soft tearing sounds.

"You know," he murmured finally, turning to glare at her with angry brown eyes. "I really kind of hate you right now."

She felt cold, but she's not sure if it's because of Ken's words or the water still dripping from her hair. "Ken?"

"Aren't you my friend? Aren't we friends?" He asked hurried, his gaze intense and imploring.

"I…" It was on the tip of her tongue to say they weren't, she'd been saying that for months for all the impact it actually seemed to be having, but the words just stuck in her throat as she stared at him. He looked really… hurt. She licked her lips nervously, averting her eyes and toweling off roughly. "Of course we are," she muttered finally, because it was probably, mostly, kind of, the truth.

"Then why the fuck did you do that? Huh? You don't know anything about him, about us. What he does for me… it isn't easy for him," he turned away, yanking the shirt roughly down over his head. "It's really… memories are stupid, okay? The unimportant ones all sort of fade away eventually, but the really awful ones never do. You never get rid of them, not really. The bad stuff just sort of kicks back in your mind somewhere and waits around to fucking jump out at you when you least expect it. I know it's stupid that I'm still afraid of fucking showers. I know that. I _know _that and knowing doesn't help… it just makes it worse and I don't know how to stop. I'm fucking weak like that. I can't protect anyone, not even myself. So every time I feel water pounding against my skin like that, I'm back in that stupid fucking basement like I never fucking left and I can't stop. I've tried and I… it's so stupid. But Mukuro doesn't ever laugh at me for it, you know, he never has, instead he just figured out a way to help me."

"Ken, I… you know I wasn't trying to say that he…"

"Yeah, you fucking _were_. You think because he can do this for me he can just make people do whatever he wants. I get it. You're scared. He's a scary fucking guy and you don't know him and you don't know anything about how this shit works," he muttered and this serious Ken was so different from the usual jovial boy she knew that she couldn't help but wonder if this was still Mukuro just pretending. But she'd seen him do that a few times and he was really scary good at it, so maybe not.

"Can you explain it to me then?" She asked and he snorted laughter. It wasn't a nice sound.

"Yeah, sure, I'll explain it and then, friend or not, I will fucking gut you if you say shit like that to him again after I do. He doesn't deserve to be fucking punished for doing me a favor. Wait until we're back in the cell."

He dressed quickly and she followed suit, marveling a bit at how different he seemed now that he had something like purpose, however temporary.

The second they were back in their cell, he threw himself down on the bed, plucking Chikusa's hat from his pocket and turning it over and over in his hands. "So, the possession thing only allows him to guide intentions; he can't do anything that isn't something the person would do. And, no, it's not just because it would give him away or whatever, it's because doing something like that would cause the connection to break. That's why he uses it for reconnaissance mostly or to conduct business transactions, cheat at cards, shit like that."

"You want me to believe that he doesn't kill people with that? Seriously?"

"Of course he fucking kills people with it, don't be stupid," Ken snarled, fingers tangling in the fabric in his hands turning it inside out and back again. "What I'm saying is that that isn't what he does _most_ of the time. I mean, I guess people are pretty fucking complicated. If you asked someone, just like the average guy, he'd probably say he doesn't have it in him to kill someone. That he could never kill his wife or his son or his parents or his dog or what-the-fuck ever and he'd be a fucking _liar_. People lie all the time. Most of the time they don't even realize they're doing it. They bury all these stupid fucked up little truths in the back of their minds like dogs bury bones and they try to pretend they don't exist. All Mukuro does is dig them back up. All the little slights and grudges, all the hate and the anger and the fear and the greed. He just digs them up and makes a suggestion, gives them a nudge. I guess it's pretty easy once you know what you're looking for, I don't know. When he tries to make people do things they don't have the capacity to do, his control breaks."

"So that's possession. It's not that fucking exciting. It's not some all-powerful bullshit or anything, he's just really good at it is all. And for the illusions, they only work when you believe in them. Without belief, they're just like pictures in a stupid book. They can't hurt you, not really. Being an illusionist is like having the power to do everything or nothing. He's a little different, but he has a lot of the same limitations. What he does for me is like a combo pack of those things. He possesses me and basically shuts me away so that none of it can touch me and then he takes my place. It only really works because I trust him and so I don't buckle under the pressure and the connection doesn't break. So, he basically just lives my shitty memories for me so that I don't have to and I let him do it. That's what it takes just to get me through a five-minute fucking shower. So, no, he can't make people do shit they wouldn't fucking do, not really, not unless he's willing to bear the consequences and they're willing to cooperate. So, shut the fuck up about shit you don't understand."

"Ken, I…"

He jerked away and she lowered her hand back to her side as he stared at her like she was a stranger, his eyes wide and wild. "Don't touch me. You really need to not fucking touch me right now. I want to stay friends with you, I like being friends with you, but you shouldn't talk to me for a little while. I don't want to hurt you just because you didn't know any better."

"Okay," she managed, throat tight. She really hadn't meant to hurt him and she hadn't even realized she _could_ hurt Mukuro, not that she'd really thought she had, but it felt like she should apologize, maybe. Though he probably wouldn't be interested in hearing it.

"I'm gonna go eat," he grumbled, pushing himself to his feet. "You do whatever you want. You're pretty good at that."

-ooo-  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 146  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
February 1, 2003

**KEN**

He'd followed M.M. to the showers on autopilot. Between one step and the next he found himself sitting at a table, shoveling breakfast mechanically into his mouth. He was a little bothered that Mukuro hadn't bothered to say anything to him when he came and went this time, but he let it go. It didn't seem to matter very much. He curled back up on his bunk after he finished eating and went back to sleep. He noticed that M.M. was looking at him a little funny, but he let it go.

His sleep was disjointed, weird and filled with nightmares.

That night he woke up and he could tell Mukuro was there before he opened eyes. Just as he could tell something was wrong, that Mukuro wasn't okay. He could smell his fear, stronger than usual and crisp as winter, raising his hackles with the way it tainted that dark, earthy smell. He wriggled around, his body still heavy with exhaustion, until he was lying as close to the source of that scent as he could get, until he was close enough to wrap his arms around it, cling to it, Mukuro's smell wrapped up in a stranger's clothing.

_Too much, Ken._ Mukuro commented silently, his presence settling in around him, cold and almost a relief after so long now that he was finally awake enough to appreciate the familiar feeling. Had it really only been a couple weeks? It seemed longer.

So much longer.

_How's Chikusa?_

_Nowhere near as clingy as you for which I am thankful every day._

Ken scoffed, snuggling closer and ignored the hands that were trying to half-heartedly pry him off, _I'm sick; you have to humor me, that's the rule._

_That's a stupid rule._

_You're the one who made it up._

_Only because Lancia was the only one who ever got sick and all he ever wanted were tissues and for you to shut the fuck up. Besides, I am humoring you. Why do you think I haven't stabbed you yet?_

_I'll take it._ _You showered for me this morning?_

Those hands hesitated, lingering cool and uncertain for a moment, before renewing their removal efforts. _Hm. Yeah. About that…_

_What'd you do? You never just leave without saying anything. And you're talking to me like this because you don't want M.M. to hear, right?_

_She was asking uncomfortable questions and I'm not… I'll show you. That's probably simplest._

And he did: the shower conversation, impersonating him after, the embarrassing level of melodrama.

Ken burst out laughing, muffling the sound against Mukuro's side. _You're such an asshole. She looked like she was gonna cry or something. I mean, fuck, I know none of that shit was technically a lie, but did you have to make me look like such an oversensitive prick? I'm not gonna be able to look her in the face without laughing and then she _really_ won't believe any of it and she'll be super pissed. Though I'd never have been able to explain it that well so it's probably still better that you did it, I guess. Plus, hey, you totally got her to admit that we're friends._

_I did. Though that was hardly my intention since I can not begin to tell you how much I don't care about whether you two are going to start braiding each other's hair and making bracelets or whatever it is friends do. And seeing as I've never bothered to explain it to you at length, no, I suppose you wouldn't. She wouldn't have believed it coming from me. And you should be thanking me, I made it just embarrassing enough a scene that she'll never bring it up so you'll have plausible deniability if you need it._

_Yeah, that's probably true, I guess. You kind of come across as super shady._

_Thanks for that._

_Pretty nice impression though overall. You nailed the cursing and everything._

_I've known you a long time,_ Mukuro chuckled and Ken sighed shifting closer.

_You know I don't care, right? I mean, it's gonna be hard making up with her now, but… I'll figure it out. Sorry she said that shit._

_Why? Means that she's smarter than both of you combined. She asked questions you never have._

_That's because we trust you, asshole, not because we're not fucking stupid._

_Well, you shouldn't. And all evidence to the contrary, jackass._

Ken laughed out loud, surprised, _I think that's the first time you've called me a name back or at least the first time in a long time anyway. What's going on with you? You smell weird tonight._

Mukuro smirked and shrugged, _I'm making some changes. What I've been doing… it hasn't worked out._

Ken nodded his understanding, because he got that. He was gonna have to do that too. _I fucked up. I fucked up really bad, _he confessed silently and it felt good to let it out.

_You did,_ Mukuro admitted, never one to sugarcoat the truths he told. _We all did. We're all just a bunch of fuck ups. So at least we've got that going for us, huh?_

_You didn't…_

_Shut up. Chikusa already told me it wasn't my fault. I don't want to hear that nonsense from you as well. You both know better than that. You _know_._

And he did, some of it at least, not all of it, but enough.

There were a lot of things they never talked about.

_This wasn't you,_ he commented tentatively, careful to avoid making it a question.

Mukuro sighed, irritated. _You can't possibly be stupid enough to think that this isn't at least partially my fault. I've almost killed you both a dozen times over the years._

_And yet here we are. So either we're super fucking lucky or you're just completely terrible at killing people and we both know neither one of those things are true._

_Yeah, well, you remember what I told her about people burying stuff?_

_Yeah._

_I've done that, a lot of that, too much, I think, and it was stupid, but I did it anyway. And I'm digging it back up now. So… you need to be ready, just in case I can't handle it._

_Mukuro…_

_You promised. You both_ promised_ if I asked you to run that you'd run. That you'd do whatever I asked of you, whatever I needed. Don't make that the last lie you ever tell me, Ken. If it's necessary, just take Chikusa and go, kill anyone who gets in your way and never look back. Never look for me, forget you ever knew me, and go._

_That's probably asking a little much, Mukuro. You can use us however you want, but… I'd rather you actually _used_ us,_ Ken replied, stuffing down the urge to tighten his hold on him. He wouldn't appreciate it and he wasn't sick enough at this point that he could rely on Mukuro to humor him if he just kept pushing it. _How about if I just kill you if you really lose your shit?_

Mukuro snorted, _Think you could manage it?_

_I think you'd let me,_ Ken answered honestly and Mukuro chuckled, but not like he found it funny. _And… I'd rather it was me, if it came down to that, I mean. But I think it would eventually if you were that far gone. So, it should be me. Kappa would just mope and beat himself up forever about it afterwards._

_And you wouldn't?_

_Nah. You know me, water off a duck's back, right? _He laughed because it was easier than crying… not that that was even something he could really do anymore anyway. Fucking stupid Esterneo. _Besides, you'd do it for me, if I lost it, right? How can I expect it from you and not be willing to do the same, huh?_

_You're a sap._

_Right? It's ridiculous, but someone had to be and it wasn't gonna be you or Chikusa. So, we've got a deal, right?_

_Yeah. We've got a deal._

_Cool. So, how's Chikusa? Can I go see him?_

_Awake. Complaining. And, no, you're still not well enough. I'll let you know._

_Okay, you're the boss. So, he's definitely gonna be okay?_

_I'm insulted that you think so little of my skills, Ken._

_Shut up, you that wasn't what I meant, I'm just asking is all,_ Ken replied, sighing, shifting so his head was pillowed against Mukuro's thigh, his face turned towards the wall, one arm still slung loosely around his waist. _Is it okay like this?_

"Yes, but this is the last time. After tonight I'm gonna make you eat that arm if you keep hugging me with it." Mukuro answered aloud, fingers settling over Ken's hair. "You'll probably grow another one, but it'll probably take a long time and it'll definitely hurt. Eventually I _will_ want to hear everything that happened while I was gone, you realize."

Ken snorted, "You're such a fucking liar. You'd rather eat nails then hear about our bullshit."

"Fair point," Mukuro admitted, "I could certainly live with you just glossing over the primary school nonsense and telling me what happened to your hair and why you're both acting like the very worst sort of twelve-year-old girls. And if either one of those explanations starts with some variation of 'But _Mukuro_ I just have so many _feelings_ and I don't know what to _do_' I'm just going to stab you both and be done with it."

"There's the cranky bastard who pokes me with sharp things and insults my grasp of every language we've ever spoken, I was wondering if we'd broken you with this shit," Ken replied, smiling to himself a little. "So, did you at least find a place for us to go?"

"Yes," he replied, fingers sifting through his hair and it was so much like how Chikusa would do it that he knew Mukuro had to be doing that on purpose and it made his eyes burn. "I shouldn't have gone looking for it in the first place. We could have just found something when we got there.

"Meh, doesn't matter, it's done now. So, you found a place, huh? Can you tell me about it? Just a little bit?" Ken asked, yawning as the exhaustion caught a second wind and swept through him again.

"It's nothing exciting. Just an old, abandoned amusement park at the meeting point between two towns, but it's far away from people and surrounded by trees. Lots of shit for you to climb all over, so you'll probably break your fool neck ten minutes after we arrive."

Ken chuckled, "That sounds nice."

"Anything sounds nice when you're in prison. I could tell you we were going to live in a toxic waste dump or a volcano or in a giant shell at the bottom of the sea and you'd just ask if it had a bathtub."

"Yeah, I guess so. So, does this place have a bathtub?" Ken yawned and he was sure Mukuro chuckled and said something in reply, but he was already asleep before his brain could process what exactly that might have been.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 145  
VONGOLA  
NAMIMORI  
February 3, 2003

**TSUNAYOSHI**

It was late and Reborn and his mom had both already turned in hours ago, but he'd been laying awake in his bed ever since he'd turned out the lights, unable to shut his brain up long enough to fall asleep. He'd tried counting sheep, but that only reminded him of Lambo and neither the visual image of either the current Lambo or the ten years older version leaping over fences were exactly what anyone would call relaxing.

Tsunayoshi sat up, scrubbing a hand over his face. He wasn't really surprised when a glance at the clock on his desk informed him that it was half past ten. He sighed and flopped back down against his pillow. He wasn't worried about waking up Reborn or anything, as long as he didn't touch him, or any of the traps he'd rigged the room with, he could toss and turn and kick and whatever and he was pretty much fine. He really needed to get to sleep though. He hadn't slept very well all week and he didn't finally get some rest he was going to flunk his stupid math test tomorrow even worse than he normally did and Reborn was definitely going to shoot him or make him train until he wished he were dead or something. But just lying in bed was getting him nowhere. Maybe if he just gave up on trying for a while and went down and grabbed a snack or something he'd have better luck when he came back to bed. And if he didn't, at least it would have given him something to stare at besides the ceiling for a little while.

It took him a long time to get out of the room without triggering the traps, but he managed stumbling out into the hall with a relieved sigh. He was pretty used it by now, but it was always tough and the worst part was that Reborn changed the location and type of traps he used every single night. He'd even go as far as to say that it had actually gotten pretty good at navigating it. He still wasn't great, he usually tripped something whenever he woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, but he was definitely better at it than he used to be. He'd been so bad at it in the beginning that he'd actually made a habit of not drinking anything for a couple of hours before bed each night just to avoid the possibility of having to face the gauntlet. That had worked for a couple days but then, of course, Reborn had caught him at it and started insisting he drink two glasses of water before bed each night. He'd let him stop that once he'd managed to make it through successfully a couple of times. Of course, that had taken months.

The hall was dark, but once he went down the narrow stairs he could see that there was a light on in the kitchen. It wasn't like his Mom to be up at this time of night. Was something wrong? She'd seemed fine when they'd said goodnight, but maybe. He peered cautiously around the doorframe and then ducked away, pressing his back against the wall.

If it had been anyone else he wouldn't have hesitated, but Bianchi made him really, really nervous which he thought was pretty reasonable seeing as how he'd actually lost track of the number of times she'd tried to kill him. He could just go back to bed, but… he didn't think he'd be any better off now than he'd been when he left his room and it was stupid that he was afraid to go in his own kitchen. Well, actually, it was probably smart, but it didn't make him feel any better about it. It was his kitchen after all and he had as much right to it as she did. And maybe… maybe if he talked to her… she might be able to answer some of his questions. To help him settle the problem that had been keeping him restless, queasy, and unsettled for the better part of a week.

Maybe she could tell him about Fuuta.

And maybe that would him figure out what to _do_ or whether he was supposed to do anything. Or whether he _should_. Or even whether he really wanted to get involved at _all_.

Ever since he'd met him at school that day and heard about his situation and (kind of) helped him out with those scary mafia guys, his brain kept going back over those events and tripping over this one detail, this one question, and, no matter what he tried, he couldn't just get over it or stop dwelling on it. It was like an earworm, just a tune he couldn't stop humming. And that question led to another and that new question led to other questions which lead him to still other questions until his head felt full to bursting and he ended up getting shot (again) for not paying attention to one of Reborn's lectures or to what was happening in class or ended up catching a ball in the face because he wasn't watching what was happening on the field. He just… it was stupid, but he just couldn't seem to forget about or ignore it and he couldn't ask Fuuta about it because it seemed like a really awful thing to ask someone. But he couldn't stop thinking about it either and there was no one else to ask so he was kind of… _stuck_.

He didn't want to ask Reborn about it because he didn't want to die. He didn't want to ask Gokudera about it because Gokudera always seemed like he didn't really like talking about his life before he'd come to Namimori and he didn't want to force him or anything. Maybe if they'd had another day like that one where they'd gone to the park, he'd thought that_ maybe_ he could bring it up, but that hadn't happened again. And even if it had… he'd kind of noticed that Gokudera pretty much never really talked about his parents and he wasn't sure if that was just part of not talking about himself or if it was a touchy, so he kind of didn't want to take the chance. So maybe he wouldn't have asked even if he had had the chance to do so. Yamamoto wouldn't know so asking him wasn't any good. I-Pin and Lambo were just kids themselves and Bianchi… well…

He stared at her from the threshold to the kitchen and debated whether getting a glass of milk and risking conversation was worth the chance that doing so would be like signing his own death warrant or something. She was humming to herself as she worked and he wasn't at all sure whether that was a good sign or a bad one. Since it was kind of creeping him out a little, he was definitely leaning towards bad. If she was in a decent mood, it might be okay. After all, she hadn't been super intent on killing him lately so he _might_ survive the experience. Plus, it didn't look like she'd actually cooked or baked anything just yet since she was just mixing stuff so it _probably_ wasn't as dangerous as it might be… maybe….

"Are you just going to stand there all night? It's annoying to be gawked at," Bianchi commented, eyeing him suspiciously over her shoulder before turning her attention back to her mixing.

"Oh, um, yeah, sorry, just… wanted a, um, a glass of, um, milk, sorry," he mumbled, scurrying into the kitchen to snag a glass from the cabinet. His hands were shaking a little as he set the glass on the table and went to grab the milk.

Bianchi offered no further comment, choosing instead to ignore him and focus on her prep work as he poured his milk and sat down at the table. In all honesty, by the time he actually sat down, he didn't even want the milk anymore, but it would be too awkward not to drink it now. Not after he'd made such a big deal about it. So he was kind of stuck. Of course, he knew that Bianchi knew that she really freaked him out. That she was probably quite happy about that, but he still felt like he didn't want to give in and just dump the milk and leave.

Maybe this could be like a type of training.

Sure.

That was one way to look at it.

Nerve training.

Like staying the night in a super creepy house or climbing to the top of a hill when you were super afraid of heights or… something.

"You're staring again," Bianchi commented, not bothering to turn around and Tsuna yelped in surprise, jumping a little in his chair. He sat up straighter, his fingers skittering across the tabletop to the milk glass, grabbing it and taking a gulp, forcing his gaze down to the table.

She made a soft humming noise that might have been the beginnings of laughter. It was hard to tell. He put the glass back down, his foot tapping nervously against the floor under the table.

"Can I ask you a question?" The words were out of his mouth before he even realized he was going to say anything at all and his heart leapt to a gallop in chest as he clutched the cool glass tighter, swallowing hard.

Bianchi turned all the way around, her dark hair swinging freely around her shoulders. She raised an eyebrow at him, her expression bland, "I suppose you can ask."

Right. Right. He could ask. Worst thing she'd do was ignore him, maybe kill him, but if she did it probably wouldn't be because he'd asked. "I was just wondering about, um, about Fuuta..."

"Ranking Fuuta? What about him?" Bianchi inquired, turning back to the counter to pour whatever abomination she'd been mixing into a pan on the stove.

"Well, it's just… I mean… where are his _parents_? Does he –uh- have parents, I mean? Well, um, obviously he _has_ parents he couldn't just _not_ have them at all, but I mean, I kind of understand about Reborn and Lambo and I-Pin, since they're all kind of… you know. But Fuuta… he… it's just that he isn't… I don't know. He just… he doesn't have any weapons and he doesn't really know how to defend himself or anything and he's always being chased by these big, scary mafia guys and I don't understand _why_. I mean, why is he all by himself like that?"

Bianchi set the bowl aside and turned around to stare at him for what felt like a really, really long time in silence, her eyes as blank and pitiless as the rest of her expression. By the time she finally deigned to answer him, Tsuna was on the verge of just telling her to forget he'd asked and apologizing for wasting her time or maybe just throwing the glass of milk to distract her as he made a run for it.

"Reborn hasn't told you much about how the mafia works," she said finally, her tone as flat as her stare. "Neither has Hayato apparently. I wonder why?"

Her face said she knew exactly why and that it had everything to do with him being a loser who would never be good enough for anything.

"Uh, I don't know, um," he stammered, though he was pretty sure he _did _know and that it wasn't because they thought he wasn't good enough, but because he didn't ask, he didn't want to know. Mostly because showing any kind of interest to either of those two felt like he was encouraging them and the _last_ thing he wanted to do was _encourage_ them. But this wasn't… this wasn't about _that_. This was just about Fuuta. This was _different_. And he needed to know. He wasn't sure he could have said exactly _why_ it was different, but it was. "I just… I just want to know: _why_?"

"Why we would just let a defenseless child wander around on his own without anyone or anything to rely upon besides the kindness of strangers."

It wasn't a question the way Bianchi said it, but he answered it anyway. "Yeah, I guess."

She turned back to the stove, silently. "He's told you how he makes rankings?" She asked after a few awkward moments of silence.

"Sure, I mean, I didn't really understand all of it, or any of it really, but I guess he has to be close to someone to receive their rankings and then he writes them in the book or… something."

"That's the most pertinent part. The mafia is spread out all over the world and Ranking Fuuta has to travel constantly in order to take and update rankings. It's not just that he likes viewing rankings, though I'm sure he does since I've never met one that _doesn't_. It's that he _has_ to view rankings; he's compelled to do so. That's what being called to do rankings _is_. He isn't the first with that title and he won't be the last. The position is passed from chosen to chosen whenever the previous one dies or loses the ability to contact the ranking planet. The turnover rate is actually quite high, higher than most people realize because Ranking Fuuta is a rotating position that never stays within any particular family for long and that makes it difficult to keep track of. The book arrives shortly after the new Fuuta aligns with the ranking planet and at that point the mafia Famiglia the Fuuta previously belonged to is no longer allowed to interfere overly with the Fuuta in accordance with mafia law unless the Fuuta requests aid in exchange for a favor or as payment as the Fuuta is allowed to barter their ranking data as they see fit. It's left entirely to their discretion. The only reason you're permitted to interfere as freely as you do is that you're not, strictly speaking, part of the mafia as of yet."

"So, I mean, if I were actually the Boss of Vongola- which I do _not_ want to be at all- rather than just the candidate or whatever, I wouldn't be able to help Fuuta?"

"Or if you'd been raised within a proper Famiglia. And no, not without receiving something in exchange," Bianchi replied, smoothing out the mixture in the pan and turning her attention to another mixing bowl.

He couldn't help but wonder how old Fuuta had been when he'd come into the position. "Did he… did he have parents?"

"I don't know. I've worked for and with Vongola many times over the years, but I'm not actually of Vongola, you know."

"Uh, yeah, I knew that, um, Gokudera mentioned it a while ago."

"Hayato?" Her voice perked up with a note of curiosity and life that it had lacked before though she didn't turn around. It was a strangely hopeful sound, "He spoke about me?"

"Um, a little," he replied cautiously, because the very last thing he wanted to do was talk about Gokudera with Bianchi. This felt way too much like he was stepping into dangerous and unknown waters.

"That's nice," she commented, her voice soft with affection. "That you get along with him. Hayato should have friends. He was a very lonely child."

"He was?" Tsunayoshi replied, surprised.

"Yes."

"But… _why_? I know he's a little violent, but he's… he's really great." He said the last quietly, suddenly feeling a little shy. It was a little embarrassing to say out loud.

"He is," Bianchi agreed before she fell silent again. He didn't think it was because she was angry or annoyed for once, which was a nice change, she just seemed lost in thought. When she spoke again, her voice was very quiet. "There were rules, circumstances, that made it… difficult for him to interact with many people outside the immediate family."

Tsunayoshi blinked at her, surprised and… unsure how to react. Mostly he wasn't sure what the heck that even meant. Had he been sick? He couldn't even picture that. Had he just not been allowed? Were there no other kids around at all? Were his parents just really overprotective? That didn't seem very likely. "I don't get it," he replied, frowning. "What is it with all these rules? Fuuta can't ask for help? Rules about who Gokudera could talk to? I just… I don't get it. How is any of that fair?"

"Fair? That is exactly why I can't understand why Reborn is wasting his precious time on you," Bianchi replied tersely, whipping the contents of her bowl with swift and merciless precision. "You're lazy, simple, ungrateful and hopelessly naïve. As if life is ever so uncomplicated that everything is just right and wrong, good and bad or black and white. Expecting everything to be _fair_," she scoffed, shaking her head. "You'll be lucky to last twelve minutes as a Boss with an attitude like that."

He wanted to snap that he didn't want to be the Boss of anything or anyone, but he knew from experience that no one ever treated it like it was something he had the option to refuse no matter how much he protested or said he wasn't gonna do it. No one cared about his opinion. Plus, he wasn't sure he had the guts to snap at Bianchi in the first place or that she wouldn't kill him if he did manage to summon up the will and he _really_ didn't want to die. But…

Gokudera was really great. Kind of weird and a little scary sometimes, but great and he really hated the idea that Gokudera had grown up like that. He didn't know everything, probably didn't even know anything about it really, but sometimes, sometimes when he thought no one was looking, Gokudera still looked kind of… _lost_. Like he was looking for something he hadn't yet managed to find. He was really grateful that Gokudera had come to Namimori, but being grateful didn't stop him from still being kind of mad that Gokudera had had to travel halfway around the world trying to find somewhere he belonged.

And then there was Fuuta. Fuuta was just… he was so _tiny_. He was tiny and he was defenseless and he didn't have anyone to look after him at all. He seemed so grateful for the littlest things. He'd looked like he was going to cry when Mom had offered to wash his clothes for him. And he just couldn't stand that.

Fuuta was just a little kid, but he didn't have a Mom to wash his clothes for him, to make sure he had enough to eat or sound disappointed when he did poorly in school. Heck, he wasn't even _going_ to school probably. Which, sure, might have been great for someone like himself since he was really awful at it, but Fuuta liked books and got along with the other kids that hung around the house and he'd probably like going to school. But apparently he couldn't because he was too busy wandering around trying to find out who was the fastest at eating curry in the mafia or whatever and that… that seemed kind of awful.

Awful that there was no one to love him or take care of him or make sure bad people didn't hurt him or maybe just to make him stop doing that stuff all the time and instead just settle down and go to school and do the rankings stuff on the weekend or something. It really freaked him out that Fuuta might just disappear from his life one day just as suddenly as he'd first appeared and he might never see him again. That he might never even know if something awful had happened to him until some other guy showed up with the title and the big, stupid book.

He didn't understand the mafia and the more stuff like this that he heard about the less he _wanted_ to. Reborn was always going on about family and maybe, _maybe_, every once in a while it didn't sound so bad. That he kind of liked the idea of having a reason to spend all his days with Gokudera and Yamamoto and the others, but then there was stuff like _this_. There was the killing people thing, which he _really _wasn't okay with, and then there were all these kids who no one cared enough about to keep safe. His parents weren't perfect, but at least they didn't encourage him to run around blowing people up or let him do things that were dangerous or let him get chased around by mafia guys….

Okay, so, maybe his parents weren't the best example, but at least his Mom loved him and she had cared enough about his future to get him a tutor hoping he'd do better in school at least. Sure, her choice of tutor hadn't been the best, but at least she'd _tried_. And that was more than it seemed like anyone had been willing or able to do for Fuuta. Who would even _want_ to be part of something that treated kids like they should be able to fend for themselves like that? Like they were disposable and replaceable. There were probably a lot of things he didn't know or understand and maybe it was more complicated than it seemed, like Bianchi was saying, but… she'd also said he wasn't really a part of it. And that not being a part of it meant he could do something about Fuuta, to help him maybe.

Even if in the end, all he could do was try and fail, he should at least try.

But if he was going to try… he needed to know _more_.

"So, why?"

"Why what?" Bianchi asked, her tone no longer irritated, back once more to being merely bored as she poured the contents of the small bowl in a zigzag across the top of the pan she'd poured the earlier mixture in.

"Well, I mean, there's a reason that things are the way they are, isn't there? That Fuuta has to barter for his safety? That there's a Ranking Fuuta in the first place and a reason he can't have a family who takes care of him? That he can't do his rankings without being close to the people he's ranking? That he keeps the rankings in a giant book rather than something smaller and more easily portable? Something that can be hidden or even just you know like a normal-sized book? Why can't he just carry a notepad and jot stuff down in rather than and add the rankings to the book later? That would make him much less of a target, wouldn't it? I mean, that book is what really gives him away as Ranking Fuuta, right? I mean, they probably keep the name the same so no one ever knows until they see him whether the current one is someone who can put up a fight or not, right? Still, he'd be a lot safer if he didn't have to carry that giant book around with him all the time. Without it he'd look just like any regular kid and he'd be able to blend in with others with no problem. Plus, how is he even going to school if he has to travel around all the time?"

At some point as he spoke Bianchi had turned around to look at him, her gaze unreadable, "Why do you care?"

"Huh?" He blinked, his mind still churning with thoughts about what he could do to keep Fuuta safe or at least safer. It had never even occurred to him that there was another option and after a moment's thought, he didn't think there really was. "Well, I mean, someone should and if other people can't and I can, I should at least try and make things better for him, right? Even if it's just a little?"

"You can barely protect yourself without Reborn or Hayato helping you out. How can someone who can't even take care of himself really expect to be able to take care of others?" Bianchi frowned, her face screwing up for a moment as if she'd taste-tested her own cooking before she whirled back around to face the stove.

She snatched the pan from the top of the stove and shoved it in the oven, slamming the oven door and setting the timer with sharp jabs of her finger. "Go to bed, idiot Tsuna, before Mama catches you. You have school in the morning."

"Oh, okay," he mumbled, shoving down the lancing spike of pain her words had caused.

It wasn't as if he didn't know that, after all. He'd thought maybe… but… she wasn't wrong. Even Fuuta was only really interested in the version of him he was after Reborn shot him with those weird bullets. It's not like he'd actually been able to do anything for Fuuta on his own, heck, Fuuta had had to interfere to save _him _until Reborn had shown up. It wasn't like he'd forgotten that or anything it was just… _just_.

He got up, rinsed out his glass in the sink and set it on the drainer, lost in thought. She was right. It had probably been a stupid idea to think he could help. But… maybe… maybe he'd think about it a little more anyway. Just a little. Maybe that was…

He paused in the doorway, his back still turned to her and the silent kitchen behind him.

"I still want to try," he murmured. "Even if I'm just a loser. I still want to try."

Then he turned and hurried away up the stairs before she could shove poison cooking down his throat or throw something at his head for talking back.

A couple days later, he'd come home from school to find a piece of paper packed with line after line of neatly written words about Fuuta and the Ranking book. He smiled as he picked up the paper. He'd seen enough of her love notes to Reborn to recognize her handwriting by now.

(And what the heck was up with that? That was weird. That was really, _really_ weird. It was possibly the weirdest thing ever, up to and including the fact that Reborn was a tutor and a hitman in the first place. Who fell in love with a baby? Who seriously dated a baby? Who even dated a baby as a joke? It was too weird. Way too weird.)

It wasn't really much to start with. Each line was short and terse, but they addressed all the questions he'd asked her and some more besides. It was enough for him to keep thinking about it anyway. Plus, he'd noticed that Bianchi hadn't tried to kill him at all this week and that was pretty nice too.

So, the book was_ the _book, there was only one and it was passed from one Fuuta to the next and apparently the rankings were used for a lot of things besides bargaining. They were used to keep track of and record births and deaths, to determine and track strengths and skills and abilities and potential, but mostly it functioned to provide information that allowed for the enforcement of mafia law.

Which seemed _weird_.

Why would the mafia need that if all the families operated mostly independently? What _was _mafia law anyway? How many laws could something like the mafia, which seemed like it was made up of a lot of different people that fought and killed each other all the time for fun and profit, really have or need? And who enforced that kind of stuff anyway?

What the heck did a mafia criminal even look like? When your world was made up of assassins and enforcers and deadly kids and freaky bullets and time-travel bazookas and death, what did you have to do to be bad enough that they locked you away? Did they lock people away? Did they even _have_ prisons? Was that a thing? Or did they just kill people? And if they just killed people, wasn't it weird to kill people for killing people? He knew capital punishment was a thing, but he'd never really understood it.

The more he thought about it, the more his head ached because none of it really made a lot of sense so he was left, as usual, with the feeling that he didn't understand anything, that he_ couldn't_ understand anything maybe because he didn't _know _anything. But he didn't know how to fix that or even if he _wanted_ to fix that, because the last thing he wanted was for anyone to mistake his wanting to help Fuuta as an actual interest in becoming part of the mafia.

Maybe he could figure out a really sneaky way to ask Gokudera if he knew anything about it when he was in one of his more mellow moods. Maybe they could go to the park again.

It was worth a shot at any rate.

-ooo-  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 2574  
ESTERNEO  
NORTHERN ITALY  
June 9, 1996

**SALVATORE/MUKURO**

They were testing him again.

This hadn't been how he thought he'd spend his birthday.

They'd been at it since well before dawn. They'd woken him up and dragged him down the basement and since they'd arrived they'd shot him easily a dozen times so far. He'd still been half-asleep the first time. He was pretty sure he'd screamed. He'd definitely fallen over, dropped his borrowed body right into a tray of instruments that he'd sent skittering across the floor. He'd grabbed a pair of forceps and jabbed them into that body's forearm, rage making it difficult to breathe and the body screamed and he was able to disengage, to pull back into himself shaking, a dirty word on his lips until he saw his father staring at him with narrowed eyes.

He swallowed the curse, his stomach churning and uncertain, and whispered an apology even though that curse had remained unspoken, looking away quickly to avoid his father's glare.

"_Again._ And perhaps you could at least _try_ not to stab anyone this time," Father commented, jotting something down on the notepad in his hands. "We don't have an endless supply of family left for you to murder, you know."

"Perhaps you could give me the damn gun and I could shoot you instead and we'll how you like it," he snarled in return, slapping a hand across his mouth too late. He hadn't meant to say that. He hadn't meant to say that. Where had that even…?

"Oh?" His father smiled and waved his hand and one of the enforcers peeled off the door with a tight smile, "Children should be seen and not heard, Salvatore. If you are uninterested in cooperating with today's experiments, it is a simple enough matter to force your compliance."

No, no, _no_.

He scrambled backwards off the table, tumbling to the floor, pain shifting through his eye and he winced. His breathing came harsh and panting as he heard booted footsteps, heavy and solid against the tiles.

_Move now._

He rolled to the side as a booted foot swept through the space where he'd been kneeling a moment before. His sword, the trident his father had given him was in his hand, clutched in a white-knuckled grasp. He's not sure where it came from, but he'd glad for the familiar weight. He slid up and around and he was fast, faster than he'd ever been, faster than his father's man and the trident extended becoming more spear than dagger as he thrust it forward, cutting through the air between them to slice razor sharp across the tendons in the man's ankles, dropping him to his knees.

He whirled into a crouch and leapt onto the man's back, using the force of his momentum to send him crashing face first onto the floor and grinned savagely as he punched the trident, back to being a dagger again, through the back of his man's neck with as much force as he could muster, embedding it in the floor below. It severed his spinal cord and a few more vicious blows severed the head entirely. He stood and kicked it as hard as he could, sending it to burst against the wall beside his father, spraying blood across both his dark suit and the pristine white walls and floor.

"Don't try that again," he whispered, trembling with the effort it took to hold still when all his body wanted to do was _move_ and _maim_ and _kill_. "If you touch us again, I'll kill you."

"Noted," his father replied, coolly, his gaze lit with interest. A smile like everything had happened precisely as he'd meant it to play out. "The mark in your eye… those lines… four, perhaps? Interesting. You had flames over that eye while it was active as well. That might explain why you were able to move so quickly."

"Shut up. I don't _care_," he whispered, some of the rage fading away as if it had never been, leaving him cold and shaken. His muscles ached and Mukuro… he was so angry. It seemed as if his rage would swallow him whole. He stared in wide-eyed astonishment at the body leaking blood all over the floor at the mess splattered across the walls and Father.

Oh god, what had he done _now_? _Why_ had he _done_ that? H-He would be punished, he would be….

"Very well. Let's continue," his father said, motioning the woman wielding the gun loaded with possession ammunition forward. "Shoot him again. If he flinches or decides to try out new behavior again, feel free to shoot him in the leg with the gun with the real bullets." He looked strangely pleased and it made Salvatore uneasy, made him want to run away and hide in his room… which was ridiculous. He couldn't run from him. He couldn't hide either.

He couldn't imagine why that thought had even occurred to him.

_Why am I crying?_

Silly.

_Father is just doing what he thinks is best._

He didn't want Father to be mad at him.

"Father? Please, I-I…" Salvatore swallowed hard, wincing. He thought about telling his father that it wasn't him that he would never do anything like that. That he hadn't stabbed anyone, but he had a feeling that would just make things worse, make his father more irritated and then that enforcer with the pistols really would shoot him in the kneecap or something. "I'll be good," he promised, though he wasn't certain whether that was what his father actually wanted to hear or not.

A gunshot rang out, loud in the small space and the pain was sudden and somehow even worse than usual.

-ooo-

And so it continued all morning and into the afternoon as they forced him from body to body, exhausting him, hurting him and Mukuro was _angry_. He could feel his rage coming in steady waves that shivered through him even as he tried to ignore them, ignore _him_.

Tried to pretend he couldn't feel anything from him at all.

He just repeated the same mantra he'd been practicing for weeks now, since the incident with Joshima.

_I am myself. I am Salvatore Vinciguerra._ _I will be better. I will be the best and please Father. I will be everything I'm meant to be and our family will thrive. I'll save them. I'll save them all._

For the most part Mukuro had been… quiet, calm as if sated by the earlier spat of violence. They'd kept to themselves since that day and he'd wondered, maybe, once or twice, if that had hurt Mukuro as much as it had hurt him being trapped there. Not that it mattered if it had. Mukuro was the one who had locked them in there, after all, so he only had himself to blame. As if Ken Joshima were worth that kind of suffering. They didn't even know him. So what if they'd heard his screaming. So what.

So _what_.

That was the price of progress. That's what Father said. The price of progress, the only way they'd survive. This was what was best for the family.

For the _family_.

Everything was _for the family_.

That was what was important. That was what mattered. And it was important, vitally important, because if it wasn't… if it wasn't then _why_ had he had to suffer? _Why _had he had to die? _Why_ was everything so…?

_I am myself. I am Salvatore Vinciguerra._ _I will be better. I will be the best and please him. I will be everything I'm meant to be and our family will thrive. I'll save them. I'll save them all._

Lunch was cold soup from a thermos. They left him alone to eat it. There was an operation planned for that afternoon. The soup tasted strongly of raw onions and he gagged repeatedly trying to swallow it, in the end he managed to choke it down, but he couldn't not eat it. There was punishment for failing to finish a meal after all.

He'd fallen asleep for a while he was waiting for them to come back. When a nurse came in to wake him some time later he wasn't sure how much time had passed. He was cold and stiff from laying on the table and his head felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton. Everything seemed to move too fast and too slow all at once, sound strangely muffled as he let the nurse lead him to a different table, behind a curtain. It took him a long time to realize he was in a different room than before. That he was in the operating suite and there were a lot of people around. Way more than were usually present for these experiments.

"I… h-how did I get here?" He asked, soft and confused, still kind of sleepy. He leaned in against the table as the floor seemed to jitter and shake beneath him, determined to buck him off the face of the world.

"We moved you here while you were sleeping," she replied easily. "Hop up on the table, passerotto."

Salvatore tensed, his breath quickening; they only called them that when it was going to hurt. He'd figured out after a while that they did that on purpose. Sometimes he thought it was to prepare him for the inevitable, sometimes he thought it was to see what he'd do, if he'd try to run.

"… don't want to," he moaned, shuffling away from the nurse's touch.

"Come now, passerotto, there's nothing to be frightened of. Your father will be here in a moment. You don't want to disappoint him by not being ready, do you?"

Another moan tore its way from his chest, neither affirmation nor denial. There was something… something wasn't right. He wasn't… something wasn't right and he needed… he needed to _go_. There was something… something…

"Why can't you just leave me alone?" He rasped, panic building in his chest looking for a way out. He felt her hand settle on his shoulder and it finally found it. A scream tore from his chest as pain lanced through his eye and a terrible chorus of hissing filled the room. There were screams, so many screams and he wasn't… something smooth and slick slid round his ankle, curling round and round, a flickering, ticklish brush of a paper-thin tongue brushing his shin and some of that panic eased and he could think again.

There were a dozen snakes in the room.

Two had been crushed, several more had died from stab and bullet wounds, but the others were doing just fine, having completed their terrible task, leaving twitching, sobbing victims behind them as they slithered away. He thanked them silently, knowing instinctively that they were his or at least here for him, and, if nothing else, he was grateful for the sudden silence of the room. The snake curled around his ankle had bitten the nurse who had touched him and was now curled protectively around him as if it's thin scaly body could protect him from whatever came after this.

It wasn't true.

The nurse twitched and seized at his feet, the movements dying along with the light in here eyes.

Nothing could protect him, save him.

Not that he needed to be p-protected.

Not that he w-wanted to be saved.

No, he was happy here. He l-loved his f-family. He loved his… home.

"I told you not to touch me," he murmured, nudging the dead woman with his foot now that she'd stopped twitching.

"You've made a terrible mess," Father commented, summoning Salvatore back to the operating room filled as it was with the dead and the dying.

"Oops," he murmured. He tried not to laugh. He really did. He tried really _hard_ not to laugh, but he couldn't help it. It just came bubbling up and out, spilling into the air, a rusty, rasping sound. He laughed and laughed and the snake kept tickling his ankle with its tiny, sweet, paper tongue and that just made him laugh all the more.

When his father slapped him, his head whipped to the side so hard it caused him to lose his balance and hit the floor hard. He felt the snake react too slowly, its tiny head crushed beneath his weight.

_Sorry, snake. Nothing can live here long, not even the dangerous things._

The fall landed him right on top of the dead nurse and the press of his father's hand pinned him there. His voice was a soft hiss of displeasure, "You think this is a joke? I wasn't kidding when I said I don't have an endless number of people for you to kill. Now, you will pull yourself together and you _will_ go with Giulia. You _will_ cooperate. You _will_ do just as she says or I will make you very, very sorry that you did not."

He was already sorry.

"Y-Yes, Father," he whispered, tears already filling his eyes, slipping silently down his cheeks. "I will, Father."

"Yes, you _will_."

Giulia took him into another operating room and had him sit on the edge of the cold steel examination there. He worried at a nail as she smeared him with some cold gel and attached equally cold plastic electrodes to his body to connect him to a set of monitors. The room was freezing and he was still wearing the shorts and t-shirt he'd slept in the night before and his bare legs were prickly and raised with goose flesh. When they'd first come and woken him up early that morning, he'd thought it was because something special had been planned for today. Which was stupid, of course. He hadn't even stopped to change his clothes. He regretted that now. He'd been so sleepy still because it had seemed like he'd just gone to bed, but… he'd been excited too.

After everything that had happened today, he wasn't excited anymore.

He wasn't anything anymore except really, really tired.

_It wasn't as if it really m-mattered anyway._

"Don't fidget, Salvatore," Father commented, glancing up at him briefly before turning his attention back to the monitor he was tuning. "We haven't the time to keep reattaching the leads if you accidentally pull them off."

Salvatore nodded emphatically, automatically. He knew his father was a busy man and his time was valuable. "O-Of course, I'm sorry, Father. It's just…."

He trailed off, nervous and worrying at the nail again. It was starting to bleed a little, was a bit painful even. Maybe it was better not to mention it. Maybe he shouldn't even be thinking about it, but he'd been trying _not_ to think about it all day and now it was….

Father sighed heavily, "What _is_ it, Salvatore?"

"O-Oh, um, it's j-just… it's just that today is m-my, um, birthday…."

"I am obviously fully aware of this fact, Salvatore. Your birthday is the entire reason we're here today after all."

"I-It is?"

"Of course it is. As we have thus far been unsuccessful in prompting this secondary persona of yours with conventional stimuli, it's reasonable to assume we might be able to do so by using a more unconventional method of stimulation. And it seems to be working decently well so far. We've already seen two power sets we haven't seen before and a certain flare for the dramatic which is interesting."

"I-I… don't understand."

His father sighed, clearly annoyed and Salvatore felt his stomach sink, roiling uncomfortably as he tried not to fidget. "It isn't a difficult concept to grasp, Salvatore. The theory we're testing is twofold. First, I wished to determine whether attempting the usual exercises might be more effective when performed on the date of your birth, a date to which you have shown a rather ridiculous emotional attachment. Second, I wished to discover whether prompting you to do so through the use of negative reinforcement would be particularly effective on this day as compared to others. I hadn't necessarily expected to see results from this given your nascent development as it pertains to possession and this childish instance that there is separate entity within you who is the one actually capable of such feats. However, there was no harm in the attempt if we addressed other theories at the same time to assure that no time was wasted even if these particular stimuli prove ineffective."

"I-I don't…" Salvatore hesitated, trying to measure his words. He didn't want to think about that, not with Mukuro churning away inside him like a hurricane bearing down on landfall. "W-What other theories?"

"We're going to begin laying the groundwork for the Kakimoto boy's additional augmentations."

_O-Oh. Oh no. Not…_

He remembered the Kakimoto boy. Remembered the way Mukuro had reacted during the injections and Mukuro was so much more now… so much closer and he was already so v-very, very _angry_.

"But F-Father it's… it's my birthday. Can't we just…."

"I'm doing all this for you, you know that, Salvatore," The boy's father replied, making notes on his clipboard. "This is all to allow your latent potential to emerge and, I must say, it's been quite effective thus far. Perhaps all you this time I was simply too soft on you. If I had dealt with you more firmly to begin with perhaps such tactics would be unnecessary."

"B-but it's not his birthday. H-He doesn't even _have _a birthday and if he did it wouldn't be the same as mine."

"So you say, Salvatore, but I'm more inclined to believe that he is merely a wayward sliver of personality and, as such, his birthday _would_ most certainly be the same as yours. I'd have preferred to have attempted further experimentation using the Joshima boy since I do have some theoretical evidence of that having been a trigger point, but I suppose this will have to do."

"I d-don't…" Salvatore commented quickly, panic flaring as he tried to think of what might have gone wrong, how much his father had found out. It wasn't as if he had lied to him. Not telling him wasn't the same as lying, after all. It wasn't. It _wasn't_.

"Come now, Salvatore, don't be coy. You're a very intelligent child. Surely you realized that a nurse bleeding out in the operating suite and no one having noticed until it was far too late to save her was unlikely to be written off as mere coincidence."

"Oh, I-I-I-um hadn't t-thought about it that way," he stuttered, his toes tapping nervously in the air.

"Of course not," his father scoffed. "Sometimes your lack of deductive reasoning is simply astounding. All right, I believe that's everything, I'm going to go check on the Kakimoto boy's surgery. It should be interesting to see how it turns out. It's really a very delicate procedure meant to increase his mental capacity to process and store information. Perhaps later I will explain to you in detail the purpose of it, I'm sure it will be fascinating to observe the result."

A man pressed the door open and they could hear yelling in the hall.

"What is the problem?"

"It's that little wolf, Boss. Been beating on the door, yelling fool head off since surgery started."

His father smiled, pleased, "So, he _can_ hear him. Extraordinary. Even without a cartridge to enhance it, those augmentations have made him something truly special. To think he's able to hear him through all that sound proofing, simply incredible. Go and teach him a lesson then, Leo, we wouldn't want him to get the idea that that sort of behavior is acceptable. Be sure to close the blast doors as you go, that should take some of the fight out of him."

The man nodded, disappearing back out the door immediately. The nurse had finished her work and laid a gun on the table beside him with a heavy clank before retreating. He stared at it for long moments, unable to hear anything over the roar in his own ears, to focus on anything but the shiny black metal.

Surely they didn't expect him to… this wasn't… this couldn't be….

"…vatore! Salvatore, _focus_!" His father's voice snapped him back to reality and he was able to finally tear his gaze away from the gun. His father was blurry, as if he was seeing him through a haze, but he could still tell when his father was smiling at him. "I'd heard that Joshima and Kakimoto had become close," his father explained, conversationally, but he didn't understand why that would matter or why he was telling him about it now. "Now pick up the pistol and join the experiment, Salvatore. Quickly."

"But…" He'd never had to fire the gun before, never ever. They'd always done it to him, no, for him and he'd never….

He didn't _want_ to.

"Enough, Salvatore. You _will_ do this. You will do this for your family."

He felt sick.

He wasn't quite certain why, but he felt sick and he had a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, but… but his father was asking him to do this for the family.

What else could he do but obey?

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: UNKNOWN  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
?

**MUKURO**

"And then Harry the fluffy rat was eaten by the Dark Lord because he was too stupid to live. The end."

"Pretty sure that's not how that story ends," Chikusa replied wanly, coughing and shifting uncomfortably as he pressed the pillow against his stomach as the nurse had admonished him to do. His eyes were closed as they had been with only brief exception since he'd woken up. His glasses had been lost, disappeared at some point during the attack that landed him in the infirmary in the first place and he hadn't managed to track down the actual article or a passable substitute as yet. "The boy was named Harry, not the rat."

Mukuro sniffed, dropping the paperback carelessly into his lap before snagging the cup of water from the table and thrusting it at Chikusa, jiggling it so the straw waggled back and forth menacingly. "Drink. And how can you tell? The boy has a rat head hat on the cover. Besides are you reading this story? _No_, you are _not_. It ends with Harry being eaten by the Dark Lord if I say it does. Narrator's prerogative, Chikusa. If you don't like it, you're welcome to read it for yourself."

"You really hate this kind of thing, don't you?" Chikusa commented, taking the cup and sipping the water gingerly before passing it back.

"I really do," Mukuro sighed, rolling his eyes. "Fantasy novels make my brain want to vomit."

"The newspaper is fine, anything is fine," Chikusa replied, a thin smile tipped his lips up as he passed the cup back and lay back against the pillows again as if just doing that much were exhausting. It probably was. He'd woken up a few days after the surgery and while he looked better now than he had then, each and every move he made still looked painful and wary and difficult. It was difficult to watch. It made him want to run, to be anywhere else and to never leave this room all at once and he hated it.

"I'll see what I can find when I'm out," Mukuro replied rolling his eyes. "Do you want me to sneak Ken in here tonight?"

"No," Chikusa answered, wincing as he did every time he offered.

"You know, it's been almost two weeks. Do you really think it will be easier if you put it off until you're back in a cell with him? You were both stupid. You both handled things badly. He knows that, you know that. Apologize and move on. The end. See? Much happier ending than the rat book."

"I made him _sick_," Chikusa replied, his gaze sharp and the plastic cup creaking and malformed where he gripped it too hard. "He would have been fine if I had just… if I hadn't…" he trailed off, shaking his head hard.

"You're both such idiots," Mukuro snapped, tossing the book at Chikusa's head. He caught it, of course, even injured and virtually blind he was still quick enough for that, but it had felt good to throw it nonetheless. "You both insist on telling me how it isn't my fault, how none of this is my fault. That you don't mind one tiny little bit that I go a little crazy sometimes and try to kill you because I… I'm…." he broke off, shoving to his feet to pace away, to put some distance between them. The void in his head roared and it was difficult to think, to form the words. He knew the words were cruel, but he couldn't seem to summon up the will to care.

He was so tired.

So very tired.

"Sometimes I think it's because you both care too much and sometimes I think it's just because you're both so damn eager to fall on the guilt sword yourselves that you can't tolerate the idea that the terrible things that happen to us might not _actually_ be your fault. I really hate you both so much sometimes that I can barely fucking _breathe_."

And he realized distantly that he was hyperventilating and he held his shaking hands over his face.

_"Your mother? You don't have a mother, piccolo. The woman who gave birth to you died doing so, your illusions killed her. That's actually quite common with powerful illusionists; the trauma of the birth causes the illusions to lash out to defend the child from the perceived trauma, hardly a remarkable occurrence. I killed my own mother the same way."_

Dammit.

It was getting worse.

It was like being in a flooded river, he could cling to rocks and branches all he liked, but eventually it would swell and sweep him away or some piece of debris would come barreling down to knock him free of his perch and send him tumbling beneath the turbulent waters again.

"Mukuro? Sorry," Chikusa murmured, summoning him back from those dark waters, back to the infirmary, a room that was simultaneously too big and too small. The apology just made him angrier, lodging in his chest like a stone.

"Shut up, just shut _up_. Stop _apologizing_ to me. It isn't even your fault! None of this is. I can't…" He trailed off, unsure what he meant to say. The desire to apologize and to tell Chikusa to go fuck himself got tangled up in his throat and in the end he just turned away. "Just… stop. Stop making me lie to him because you're too much of a coward to talk to him."

"Never told you to lie."

"You're right, you didn't," Mukuro snapped, keeping his back to him, not that it mattered much if he were facing him or not. "I did that as a courtesy. For both you and him, but I don't have to. I suppose I could just go in there tonight and tell him that you're kind of relieved you were stabbed and almost died because it gave you an excuse to hide in here and avoid talking to him about all the crap you should have talked about weeks ago, you utter fucking _child_. Or maybe I should just rip his stupid heart out of his stupid chest and stomp on it for you. Would that be more efficient do you think? Because he could take 'I just want to be friends' or 'I need some time to think about it' or anything else in the world rather than 'everything about you scares the hell out of me, but don't worry it's not you, it's me' or 'I'd rather die than talk to you about my feelings'."

Every word is cruel and he wants to stop, but they just keep pouring out as if some pipe within him has burst and he doesn't know how to staunch the flow.

"That's not…"

"Don't lie to a liar, Chikusa, it's just a waste of your time and mine."

He closed his eyes, focused on the whimpering from Larry, the nurse, still bound and gagged and strapped to his hospital bed. He really should do something about that. Certainly he needed him to fool the machines, but it probably should have occurred to him sooner that allowing the man to stay conscious and aware of his predicament was… cruel. It wasn't even as if he particularly disliked him or anything. He was just… convenient. He opened his eyes and strode across to the little storage locker and pulled out a sedative. It only took a couple minutes to inject it into Larry's IV and a few minutes later there was only blissful silence.

He glanced back at Chikusa's bed to find that he'd dozed off again. He did that sometimes. Just fell asleep in the middle of conversations, body too focused on healing to keep him up and running for long. He was only awake for an hour, two at the most, at any given time. At least he hoped that's what it was.

He wasn't sure.

He'd chained the day nurse to his bed and hours of classes and second-hand training didn't make him a medical expert. Plus, there was always the chance that he was knocking Chikusa out the same way he was knocking Ken out which probably wasn't good for him. Ken could at least heal up any accidental damage he caused, so he really hoped that wasn't the case.

He should really go. He had intended to go up to the Warden's office today, to inspect the blocks that Larry had told him about… had it been last week? The week before? Yesterday? He wasn't certain. Sometimes it was difficult to remember, to keep track. He thought he'd question the warden too, mark him because that seemed like it would come in handy. He should do that, but… it all seemed like too much effort.

He dropped back into the chair at Chikusa's bedside, suddenly exhausted. Maybe he'd just shut his eyes for a minute, maybe two. He'd go after, later, soon. Definitely soon. Though it wasn't as if the office were going anywhere.

It wasn't as if they were going anywhere.

The machines were as quiet as they ever were, the constant beeping a soft symphony of the familiar.

Chikusa's hand was pale and limp against the blanket. He could take it and thread their fingers together.

They'd held hands before, hadn't they?

It wouldn't be weird, would it?

He wasn't certain. He wasn't certain of a_ lot_ of things these days.

He remembered holding someone's hand in a warm dry place.

No, that hadn't been Chikusa, that had been someone else, a stranger.

A stranger's fingers he'd held firmly in his own.

A stranger's warmth and light blazing bright around him, dimly remembered.

He got confused sometimes.

Most times now when it was quiet, when he was quiet.

It was worse after he slept or when he was idle and those memories, long forgotten or buried used that opportunity to return to him. Memories always want to run home, to return to the place where they belonged, especially the bad ones. They were eager as puppies to lick his skin, to clamor up his body and worry at his throat with sharp teeth until he had to slap them away or risk them ripping him open and spilling his life across the floor.

Huh. That analogy had gotten away from him a bit.

Sometimes he forgot where they were, what they were doing there. Not often, just moments really, here and there, but he knew that was dangerous. Could feel the illusions that concealed him, that kept him free to move about the prison. The illusions that concealed the fact that he wasn't the person in that bed, flicker and die and come back to life once more all in the span of a single moment. But all it would take was for it happen in the wrong moment for everything to fall apart. He'd buried two nurses, a guard and a doctor out on the grounds over the last… week? Month? What it was, he'd buried them because they'd seen or realized something that put the three of them in danger.

He couldn't keep going like this.

He knew it was scaring them, could feel their concern and fear whenever he… so he tried not to.

Or maybe that was then. Another memory of some half-forgotten time, something that had happened years ago.

It seemed like he hadn't tried possession in a while. Not really. Probably. Only the showers in the morning, when he remembered, and that one time he'd needed to talk to Ken privately. So maybe that was a memory from before. They didn't mind now, he didn't think. Not that it really mattered now anyway since it was much harder to do it now.

He was okay, usually, sometimes, most times, probably, as long as he had something to focus on. When he was talking to them or reading to Chikusa or telling stories to Ken in the dark or even answering Marie's stupid impertinent questions, but when he wasn't… when he wasn't… he drifted.

He drifted and those dark tendrils of memory snuck up behind him and slipped around him like an old friend, pulling him down into the void. Reminding him again and again in fragmented snapshots of all the things he'd tried to bury and forget. Mixing all those things with the things he did remember until he'd never be able to sort them out and separate them again.

It felt like a punishment.

He was in a child's bedroom. He was lost in a forest. Drowning in a pond. Eating lunch with them in that sunny kitchen, warm bread and pasta with a sauce that was as red as blood.

He was on the balcony in New York. On the floor, sobbing and dirty. Pushing the armchair up the stairs, laughing.

The ship to India, burning himself alive to wipe away anything Esterneo might use to trace them, track them, hurt them; realizing too late that the futility of such efforts. Trying not to throw up as he clutched those tiny studs in his hands.

Locked away in his room in Mumbai, giving orders through the cracks. So scared of everything, of everyone, of himself most of all. A picture on a dresser that spoke of an affection he didn't deserve.

In a dozen different vehicles riding down country roads and highways and on the water, moving from place to place, listening to Lancia hum along with the radio or Chikusa read or Ken grumbling about sports scores or the two of them bickering, always bickering.

Camping in forests. Staying in hotel rooms, both clean and filthy. The cabin where he'd tried out the possession bullet for the first time.

He was in the basement, more than anywhere else, always. In those white, white halls and those sterile operating rooms. Dying. Being shot. Killing people… so many people. Saving them the only way he knew how, almost destroying them as well.

He was in a hundred different rooms in a hundred different bodies, a thousand different spaces of passing familiarity: college campuses and flophouses, barns and bloodstained dens. So many different places all at once and he belonged in all of them, none of them, all at once.

He'd gone mad a long, long time ago, of that he was now certain; he'd just hidden it well for a time.

The room was cold.

He shivered, coming back to himself as he pulled his hands away from the bed, clasping them in his lap.

He couldn't leave, he couldn't stay and he was barely holding it together.

Though, he supposed, an argument could probably be made that he wasn't even managing to do that much.

Why was it so damn _cold_ in there? Had it always been?

He slid down to the floor and eased into the space between the bed and the monitoring equipment, it was a tight fit, but he managed, pressing his back against the wall and resting his arms across his knees and his forehead against them. It was a little warmer there, not much because the floor was like ice, but at least he didn't feel so exposed. He slept in this space often enough, it was out of the way so the night attendant wouldn't accidently trip over him or run into him while he was dozing. So that was something.

His teeth were chattering just a little and he heard the rustle of blankets and looked up to find Chikusa awake and peering down at him, wincing a little. "Cold?"

"Yeah."

"That's new."

"Yeah."

"Here," he tugged the blanket on his bed free with a grunt and pushed it over the side, offering the end to him. Mukuro took it reluctantly, dragging it in close. It was scratchy and rough, but he pulled it up over his legs and chest all the way up to his nose. He was still shivering, the floor was still cold, but it was kind of nice anyway.

"Better?" Chikusa asked, still watching him carefully with those clear blue eyes. It was so strange to see him without the usual barrier of those glasses. He wondered where they were again. If they had broken in the fall or just been snatched up by some enterprising inmate who'd try to trade them back later.

"Better," he agreed, voice muffled under the blanket.

"Sorry I'm making it harder for you. Wish I could help," Chikusa confessed and Mukuro smirked, shrugging his shoulders with some difficulty. It was tough to move freely in so tight a space.

"You help enough. Just… think about saying yes next time, that's all. _He says the best way out is always through. And I can agree to that, or in so far **a**s that I can see no way out but through__,"_ he murmured, turning his gaze down to stare at the backs of his hands to avoid the scrutiny of Chikusa's gaze. "It doesn't matter, Chikusa. I just have to go through my trial and you through yours. It'll be fine once it has run its course… or it won't. Either way it'll be done."

"Mukuro."

"Go back to sleep, Chikusa. It's okay," he sighed, laying his head against his folded arms. "I just need to close my eyes for a few minutes."

"Okay," he wasn't sure how much time had passed, maybe seconds, maybe hours, but eventually there was a series of soft pained grunts and quiet shuffling sounds and a cool hand slid over his own, gripping loosely.

A quiet voice murmured, "It's not your fault. None of this is your fault."

-ooo-  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 2574  
ESTERNEO  
NORTHERN ITALY  
June 9, 1996

**SALVATORE**

The gun was so heavy in his hand that his fingers trembled beneath the weight. The hammer was stiff, so stiff that he had to use both hands to pull it back.

He was scared.

He was so scared.

_They hadn't said it was possession ammo, but it had to be, right? Father wouldn't hurt him. This was for the family. I have to do this, I _have_ to._

_I'm so scared._

_I hate this. Why do I have to do this? Why now? Why today?_

_It's my birthday._

_I don't want to die._

He lifted the pistol to his head. His hand shaking so badly that he had to use the other to help steady it. He was crying. He knew he was crying and someone made a soft exasperated sound and it just made him cry harder. He squeezed his eyes shut.

_I don't want to die._

_But I don't want to be here anymore either._

_I hate this place and I hate him, I hate all of them._

In the end, pulling the trigger took nothing at all.

**-ooo-  
CHIKUSA**

The whirring, grinding sound washed through them, the scent of bone burning, scorching the air. He doesn't think he'll ever forget that smell as long as he lives. His eyes burn and his throat feels is dry and rough and he can't stop screaming.

_No one cares._

_Is this how I'm going to die? Will he be okay?_

_I hate this place. I hate it._

_It hurts._

_I want this place to burn._

**-ooo-  
KEN**

_Sure, he's a big bastard, but I… I have to try. I have to try. He's… they're probably doing horrible things to him. He's probably hurting a lot more than this. _

I hate this place. I hate these people. I hope they all die.

They spat out bits of blood and broken teeth and continued to glare at the blur of a man standing before them. "What the _fuck_ kind of family does this to their kids and calls it a blessing?"

**-ooo-  
SALVATORE/MUKURO**

_W-Why am I never good enough?_

_Don't you know by now? Nothing will _ever_ be good enough._

_S-Shut up! What the h-hell do you know about it?_

_We know he won't ever stop. Not until we're dead and then he'll just move on to the next one. He'll make another and another and another until he's dead. That's what they do. They use up everything you are, take everything you have and then they throw you away. If they can break you, you were never good enough. If they can't, you haven't reached your potential. That's all there is to it. This world is an ugly and terrible place and the mafia is worse than all the rest. He's no different._

_That's not true! H-He loves me! Why can't you understand this is necessary? That this is necessary for us all to s-survive._

_Why can't you?_

_I d-don't understand._

_Can't you?_

_S-Shut up!_

_If this is what's necessary to survive, maybe you weren't _meant_ to survive. Maybe we should all die. If that's how it's meant to be, we should hurry up and do it already._

_Then why are you alive? You're just… w-what are you?_

_You don't know?_

_W-Why would I know?_

_You're a child._

_S-shut up! You're a monster!_

_Am I?_

Of course_, you are! Leave me alone! Give it back! Give it all back. The p-power you stole from me. That was meant to be mine. Mine! Not y-yours! Give it back and j-just leave me alone!_

_Power? Is that what you call this? What they did to us?_

_Y-Yes! I'm meant to s-save them. The whole family! The mafia has murdered so many of us and persecuted us for being better than them, but it's okay. It's okay because I'm going to f-fix it. I'm going to make everything better. It's their fault things are this way. Everything would be _better_ if I could just do what I was meant to do. Esterneo could be great again. We'll be the very greatest and most powerful family in the mafia, even better than Vongola. That's why I was born after all. I was supposed to be… I was supposed to be powerful and I was s-supposed to be great and I'm just… I'm just… it's your fault! You_ stole _it. You stole my birthright away from me. You're j-j-just a thief. It's your fault. Y-Your fault, not mine. They wouldn't need to go through this if it wasn't for you. If it weren't for you, I would be enough. I would be enough to save our family. To make it thrive. I could do it._

_But that isn't what we really want, is it? We don't think anything will satisfy them. That they're even capable of being satisfied. That it will ever be enough. That anything ever could be._

_That's not true._

_It is. This world is a terrible place full of terrible people and it should be destroyed._

_I-I just want… I just want…_

_You want to live. Need to live. You want them to pay for what they've done. For everything they've done. You need the world to pay._

_I don't! I don't want that! I don't want anything like that! I'm a good boy! You're the monster! Not me! I don't want any part of that!_

_… okay._

_W-What?_

_I said, okay. It's okay. You're right. I'm the monster. I can be monster enough for all of us._

**-ooo-  
****MUKURO**

And for a moment, just the barest instant, they were all united in pain and there was rage and hate, dark and deep and raw and long denied, and it seemed to light the whole of his world on fire.

They were just the same.

All just the same.

The four of them.

No, that wasn't… it was the _three_ of them now.

_He_ didn't count.

They were monsters.

Salvatore wasn't a monster.

Salvatore was just a boy.

He wanted to be a good boy. He wanted to be loved by his family, by his father. He needed to believe in them.

That was fine.

He could die a good boy like he had so many, many times before. It wasn't as if that were anything new.

A good boy who loved and obeyed his father and forgot that the father he loved so much had let his mother die in childbirth because she'd been nothing more than a surrogate paid to be the mother of his child and letting her die saved him money and trouble later on.

Forget all the terrible things, the scary things, that made him.

The pond, the forest, the surgery to implant the red eye of which he was so proud that had been performed while he was awake and screaming and he'd died on the table. That by the time they had revived him and finished the surgery he hadn't even been able to even scream anymore, his voice had been gone for days after.

That his father had come into his room in the middle of the night and strangled him in his bed while he struggled and lashed out with illusions that had been unable to breach the illusions his father had set in place to guard against them.

That that man had smiled while he suffered.

Each and every time he died.

He just wanted to be a good son.

He just wanted to be able to love his father.

Salvatore wasn't worth anything. He didn't know _anything_. He didn't _want_ to know. He just wanted to hide from the truth, wrap himself in a cocoon of lies where it was safe and warm and he was loved and valued. He was a mindless, mewling, malicious _infant_ who didn't deserve to be connected to them. He was _weak_. Too weak to survive, to see the world for what it was or even himself for what he was.

So. _No._ It was not the _four_ of them. Not anymore.

It was the _three_ of them.

That sniveling, willfully blind _child_ who shared this body could just go to hell and stay there for all he cared.

He could save _them_. That was what mattered. They were a part of him now as surely as the voices and the power he could feel thrumming within him like a heartbeat. Their rage was his own, their pain, their hate and he felt that boy's stuttering, panicked voice pleading with him as if he sensed that something was wrong, that he was losing control. Losing his grip. Being shut out.

They stood for a moment, facing each, two boys… just the same.

Two liars.

Just the same.

Except one had the will to change and the power to do it.

"N-No! It's important!" Salvatore snarled, his hands curling into fists at his side. "Father is important! The family! You can't have it! It's _mine_, you can't take… it's all I h-have! Please don't do this. _Please! Please!_"

It was this weakness he hated about himself most of all.

He could save _them_, even if he could never….

"You weren't ever strong enough," he whispered, lashing out at him, the sound of his hand as it slapped hard across his… across Salvatore's pale, shocked face seemed so very loud. "But I-I will be."

He heard the ghost of the boy he had been call for his father, for help, for _anyone_ in that silent voice, but no one had ever listened. No one had ever cared. And he felt something darker and richer than joy as he hit him again and again, blood splattering across the white, white floor of their mind. As he crushed his protests, as he smashed everything that boy, that terrible weakness and desire to please, and shoving the stain that remained down into the deepest, darkest part of him.

No.

He was not that boy.

He was _not_.

He was himself.

Only himself.

He lay panting on the floor of his mind in the aftermath, alone and covered in gore, each breath shaking and uncertain.

What…was he?

What could he be if not him?

He'd called him a monster and he supposed that was true enough.

He was… he was Mukuro Rokudou and he didn't need… he didn't need _him_. That simpering, whining, weak child who had been too stupid to know better, to understand that he was being used. He was unnecessary. He was _weak_. Weak and cowardly and he had no use for that. He wasn't anything like him and he didn't _want_ to be.

No, he wasn't anything like him.

He was only himself.

He would be Mukuro Rokudou.

And today was his _birthday_.

He opened his eyes and the world snapped into sharp relief around him. He felt nothing, knew nothing, but he would soon enough.

-ooo-  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: UNKNOWN  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
?

**MUKURO**

It was long moments before he'd begun to remember in drips and drabs, before what he was had expanded to fill up all the empty spaces and given him enough will and power to act, to lash out.

It had been days, weeks, months even, before he had truly understood everything- or thought he did at any rate. Until he understood that he was little more than a pile of misshapen parts glued together haphazardly into a barely coherent whole. Before he remembered them marking people for him originally, understood that they were the ones who had given him Chikusa and Ken. Had given him a life and a reason to live it even if they hadn't realized that's what they were doing by marking them and opening them up to him and him to them.

But in those first hours after waking, the hours he spent massacring what he could of the Esterneo family, he'd known very little. About who he was, or why he'd woken up, or what he meant to do. A situation that had improved marginally as they moved around him, checking vitals and reflexes, trying to gauge his compatibility with that body that he knew instinctively wasn't truly his own.

He'd stolen it from… someone else.

It hadn't mattered who, only that that body was not who he was.

He was… Mukuro Rokudou.

He let their words pour over him like water. Water that hissed and evaporated as it struck down against the heat of his anger. He could remember six different lives, a jumble of images and feelings and wants and needs, but most of all, more than anything, there was that rage boiling within him, a hunger that couldn't be easily quenched, a desire to break and burn and kill and destroy everything he touched, everything that dared to touch him, because this world was sick and terrifying and awful and nothing in it could be good.

He was going to destroy _everything_ or die again trying.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 134  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
February 13, 2003

**M.M**

The first week that Chikusa spent in the infirmary had seemed really, really long in some ways and incredibly short in others. It had only gotten worse when Ken stopped talking to her, when he wouldn't even look at her anymore.

She'd spent those first days sticking close to Ken's side and for his part Ken had walked through those first days like a zombie. Things hadn't changed much after that awful day in the showers except that Ken no longer let her stick close. He ducked away and hunched in on himself and ignored her for the most part. Mukuro took his place in the showers each morning and _he_ at least was willing to acknowledge her even if it was just a nod or, one time, a question.

And that was… unsettling in its' own right, because the question was… strange.

"What day is it?"

She blinked at him, surprised by both the question and the hearing Ken's voice as it had been a couple days since she'd heard him do more than snore or whimper in his sleep or mumble with Mukuro in hushed tones at night, "Excuse me?"

"What day is it today?" Mukuro asked again, his gaze trained on the bench where he was folding Ken's dirty laundry. He'd already showered, quick and efficient and Ken's hair was dripping all over the fresh shirt he wore, darkening the fabric of his overshirt. Ken's body shivered, as he folded the shirt and then shook it back out, frowned, and refolded it again, tugging at the corners of the fold like he couldn't get them quite straight enough.

She wasn't sure why it made her nervous, but it did and she dressed quickly, waiting until she was clothed and drying her hair to answer, "It's February the sixth, I think."

"No, I meant…" he trailed off, fingers stilling on the fabric.

"It's Thursday."

"Huh. Thursday, hm?" he murmured, turning just enough to offer her a brief smile. "Took ill on Thursday, that's funny. Would you try?"

"Try?" She repeated, unable to follow. "Try what?"

"Oh, sorry, I didn't… hm. With Ken, I mean. He's not good at being alone."

"He's got you, hasn't he?" she wasn't sure why that came out sounding bitter, why her face twisted up like she'd eaten something sour.

Mukuro's laugh was like glass breaking.

It was Ken who straightened, dropping the neatly folded shirt into a messy pile on the bench and pressing a hand against his face, a hiccuping sound like a sob slipping free.

"Fucking, fucking fuck," he cursed kicking the bench hard enough to make the screws that fastened it to the floor squeal in protest.

She didn't understand what was happening.

She didn't understand anything.

She wasn't sure she even wanted to really.

But she could try.

When the guard dropped them back at their cell she shoved her soiled clothes in the laundry bag and turned to Ken, grabbing his shoulder before he laid down on the bed. "We're going to breakfast."

"I thought I told you not to touch me," he grumbled, but the protest was weak, sullen, token.

"Yeah, well, you've had more than enough time to sulk about it so let's go."

"I'm not hungry."

"You've been picking at two meals a day for a week. You're hungry, jackass. Go. Move," she bullied him out of the cell and into the line for breakfast. He mostly just sat there picking at his food, quiet and sullen and as different from how he'd been before all this happened as anyone could be. She glared at him as he stabbed listlessly at his eggs, "Look, you can either make an effort or I'm gonna tell Mukuro that you can't be bothered."

Ken looked up, vaguely panicked, "You wouldn't."

"Try me, Blondie."

He'd spent a couple of days glaring at her through meals as he mechanically shoveled limp sausage patties and overcooked eggs into his mouth at breakfast. She got similar glares at lunch and dinner and she was strangely fine with it and the mumbled name-calling of that first day because it meant the boy she knew was still in there under all that grief and guilt and sullenness. It was something and something was much better than nothing as one week turned into two and Chikusa, according to the nightly reports from Mukuro, continued to recover in the infirmary.

Between meals, she allowed Ken to mope and sleep in the cell and even pretended not to notice the fact that he kept that bloodstained hat with him pretty much all the time, folded in half and shoved in his pocket when they were out of the cell, clutched in his hands or tucked under his pillow when they were in it.

The second week she bullied him until he agreed to play cards with her just to shut her up, she dragged him out to the yard every time they offered it as an option. Anything that kept him out of the cell and out of bed for minutes or hours at a time, hell, she'd started up an arm wrestling league at the end of the second week to let Ken work off some aggression beating the pants off some of the assholes on their block and made a tidy profit betting on him to boot.

The best part of her week had been when, on an otherwise unremarkable day, Ken had cracked a half-hearted joke about the fact that he didn't need her tits to win matches. A valid point, but she'd still worn her uniform shirt with no undershirt and half the buttons undone in order to distract his opponent that day since the odds against him were particularly good. She'd replied shortly that one could never have too many advantages when there was money involved and he'd even laughed a little at that. It wasn't the same, not even close, but it was something and sometimes that was enough.

The nights though, the nights were strange.

Mukuro was a constant presence.

He always arrived after first checks, slipping into the cell using the keys on his stolen belt he'd sit on the bed and talk to Ken quietly for a few minutes before putting him to sleep and sitting back against the wall beside him. He slipped out of the cell again each morning before dawn leaving Ken to wake up naturally and alone. During the night, he was generally pretty quiet though he talked to himself sometimes, more frequently she noticed as the days wore on. No matter what he did though, Ken slept on oblivious most of the time. She'd overheard them mumbling to each other a bit at the beginning, but either she stopped catching or it stopped happening. Once she'd woken up to the sound of someone singing, soft and hesitant but kind of pretty, in some language she didn't understand. It had taken her a full minute to realize it was Mukuro. He was getting weirder and weirder. She wasn't entirely certain why that was and hadn't quite gotten up the courage to ask after the last disaster.

It had been really disconcerting having him around at first and she'd often had difficulty sleeping during those first few weeks. The first days had been the worst. She'd had an almost compulsive need to check on him, to make sure he hadn't moved, especially after the incident in the showers and, for his part, he made a point of smirking at her every time he caught her staring at him (and he _always_ caught her) as if he were trying to unsettle her. She didn't love that it was actually _really_ effective. Eventually, he'd seemed to tire of the game and offered to knock her out if she was having problems sleeping through the night. After that she'd made more of an effort for a while to at least go unnoticed though she was pretty sure she still failed miserably.

He was… crueler at night or maybe it was just when he was in his own body. She wasn't quite certain which was the case as she'd never seen him during the day as himself and never seen him at night as anyone else. When he was possessing Ken he was quiet and absentminded, not harmless by any stretch of the imagination, but… amiable, maybe, almost pleasant, definitely less acerbic. At night, he was different, more focused and more careworn, clearly exhausted. She wasn't sure when he was sleeping, but it wasn't while watching over Ken, at least not that she'd seen. His moods seemed to swing back and forth between good-natured psychopath and total asshole bastard and were utterly unpredictable.

"You've been together a long time, huh? The three of you?" She asked one night, on a whim, during the second week when she woke up well after midnight to find him sitting on the end of Ken's bunk, his back pressed back against the wall as usual and his features lost in shadow.

"All my life," Mukuro replied, surprising her a bit with the ease and apparent honesty of the answer.

"I always got the impression that they met when they were kids."

"They did."

"And you knew them before that?"

"No. They met first."

"You're the same age as them."

"Am I?"

Really she should have seen that coming. He was making a habit of always giving her just enough information to frustrate her, carving the shape of some strange greater truth with all these little comments that told her everything and nothing. "You're a real dick, you do realize that, right?" she commented sourly.

Mukuro smirked, "You've mentioned."

-ooo-  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 2574  
FORMERLY ESTERNEO  
NORTHERN ITALY  
June 9, 1996

**MUKURO**

He killed them and it felt _good_.

They screamed, they all screamed, as they tore themselves to pieces around him and it was what he needed. Maybe not all that he needed, but for the moment it was enough to watch blood drip and flow like water across the floor. Enough to be able to use his illusions to destroy them, to step inside their minds and show them they were surrounded by nothing but monsters, rabid beasts who deserved to die and let them kill each other. He'd barely even had to do anything at all. Only what he wanted to do. So, he took his time with the ones in the room, he made them suffer and it made him feel better. It made him _feel_.

They all deserved to die.

The mafia deserved to die.

The world deserved to burn.

There was nothing in it worth saving.

And then there was silence.

And then, seconds or hours or a lifetime later, there was _them_.

He felt them creeping down the hall, lingering outside the door of the operating room. They were… familiar, like the rest, but different enough that it gave him pause. Stopped him from reaching out and crushing them immediately as he'd crushed the others. They were…

He wasn't sure who they were, but he knew that he didn't hate them.

He hated _everyone_, every_thing_, but he… he didn't hate them. He thought, perhaps, maybe that he might even… _like_ them, but the concept seemed so large and foreign and strange that he couldn't act on it. He couldn't bring himself to move from where he stood. Could only linger, frozen, his breath still in his lungs.

They were damaged like he was, but they weren't broken, couldn't be if they were willing to make their own way. To make use of the opportunity his rage had provided. He liked the moxie, liked the courage it took for them to attempt an escape barefoot and defenseless, while the others sat and quivered in fear, pissing themselves like puppies that knew they'd done bad things.

_Cowards._

He despised cowards almost as much as he hated these worthless adults.

But they weren't like that. They were… _different_.

They had left their prison behind and made a break for the surface, for freedom, and that was _interesting_, _they_ were interesting, and so he didn't really mind if they managed it. All the other minds and souls surrounding him he had wanted decimate, to grind into the dirt. He'd thrown everything he had at them, used all that he was to make them kill themselves and each other and it had been _glorious_. But he could let them go, allow them their chance. He didn't need to destroy them. He _didn't_. Even if the itch was there, the urge crawling just beneath his skin, he didn't _have_ to allow it to rule him. He could just… let them go. He could do that. He was strong enough to do that.

He was.

He _was_.

He would simply pretend he had not noticed their footsteps, their soft words that had seemed to echo down the corridor. He would kill all the others, those last stragglers above and below, but those two… he would let them go, let them leave.

He stood still, very still, in the center of the operating room as their footsteps halted briefly outside, he held his breath and would have stopped his heart if could have.

_Go on, _he urged silently, even though he couldn't bring himself to use his connection to them to make them hear. He didn't want to frighten them, not really. He didn't want to touch them.

_Just go on already. Just go. Be smart, be quick and never stop running. The rest are upstairs and they'll realize something is wrong eventually and they'll come down here. Come down here and attempt to put an end to me, but if you go now you can slip past them. They'll never notice you. I won't allow it. Just go._

_Just _go_._

They were still in the hall, still lingering and silent, or maybe they'd left and what he was feeling was just an echo of their presence and then the door creaked and it felt as if he were falling. They were supposed to _go_. Why weren't they going? They were supposed to leave this place and yet… and _yet_… he heard them step into the room, one after the other. He could feel them behind him and he knew he'd been seen and it made him tremble with barely restrained rage.

_Don't come._

_Don't look._

_Don't see me._

He didn't want to kill them, but he felt like he would, like he wouldn't be able to stop himself. Like his control was balanced on the head of a pin and all it would take was their horror and their revulsion to send him tumbling over the edge. That he would lash out and end them in an instant without even meaning to.

That they would see the boy that he'd seen in all those shiny surfaces. The bloodstained boy with the strange eye and they would see the carnage he had wrought and they would be….

_Pleased?_

They were _pleased_?

No, that wasn't exactly right. They were… _satisfied_. They were… _glad _and it was a warm feeling that stole the air from his lungs. They weren't horrified by what he had done, not truly. Theywereafraid, but it wasn't enough to dissuade them, wasn't near enough to send them running. They were far more interested than they were afraid. He heard a low growl from one of the boys and he sighed in something like relief, he still didn't need to destroy them.

Not really.

The world… _yes_… he still wanted to destroy the world that had created him, that had hurt him, that had… hurt _them_, because they'd been hurt here as well. He knew that. He… _knew_ that. He might not know the circumstances, but he knew enough. They were just the same as he was and that was enough. They could live. This abominable filthy world had tried to destroy them, but they were all still standing.

That was something.

That was _everything_.

-ooo-  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 132  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
February 15, 2003

**M.M**

She really wasn't sure if she'd ever understand why Chikusa and Ken were so crazy about the guy outside of whatever weird hero worship thing they had going because of whatever he'd done for them when they'd all first met. She hadn't understood even half of Ken's little rant during that Esterneo business about him saving them during all that Esterneo business, but she found out slowly through the second week and into the third that he wasn't terrible to talk to. Kind of a dick, kind of crazy, but a decent conversationalist all things considered, once she got him going.

So, she made a habit of poking the proverbial bear, peppering him with questions more to find out what he'd do at first rather than because she'd actually expected answers. She was careful to avoid talking about possession or sex or sexuality in general and, to her surprise, he was strangely forthcoming most of the time, almost making a point of answering every question she posed one way or another. And, more often than not, he seemed to be telling some variation of the truth as, if he had any obvious tells, she hadn't yet managed to ferret them out yet. He just presented each new answer in the same bored, wry tone as the last. She was beginning to think more and more often with each passing day that Mukuro didn't actually lie. That he didn't have to. Instead, he just answered minimally and let her make an endless series of incorrect assumptions.

"Where'd you go to school?"

"I haven't."

"Really? You just picked up that vocabulary off the street? That where you learned Japanese as well?"

"I said I haven't gone to school, not that I wasn't educated. And, yes, in a way, I suppose I did learn Japanese _on the street_, as you say."

"Then where were you educated?"

"Many places."

"Name one."

"Cambridge."

"Which I suppose would explain why your English is so posh."

"Not true, one actually has nothing to do with the other."

"How's that?"

"I learned English long before I took classes at Cambridge."

"Where'd you learn English?"

"From a tired old Englishman with a limp."

"Okay, what's your favorite color?"

"What's the point of having a favorite color?"

"What's the point of having a favorite anything? It's just one thing you like better than the rest."

"Pink."

"Pink?"

"Pink."

"You're a liar."

"And you're wasting my time."

M.M. snorted, folding her pillow in half so she could prop up her head and see him more easily. "It wasn't as if you were doing anything else anyway."

"I might have been if you didn't insist on badgering me with questions."

"Somehow I doubt that's true. You look terrible. Are you sleeping at all?"

Mukuro shrugged, "I've never slept much."

"Of course you haven't," she replied, rolling her eyes.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 2574  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
June 9, 1996

**MUKURO**

There's a word and he thinks it might be a name.

It rings through his head like a bell; loud, clear and resounding as it echoes through his brain, scattering his thoughts like leaves swept away by an unexpected breeze.

He can feel it in his bones when his fingers graze the block, when the corners slice open his fingertips.

The room was splashed with red.

_Like a Pollack painting_, one of those lives whispered within him.

_It was untitled, black and red splashed and scribbled in lines and circles across a beige canvas, purposeful chaos._

_I saw it once in a book and her fingers were dark where they pressed against the yellowing pages._

Drips and drabs beaded fresh and shining across the lines, shining faintly in the dim light of late afternoon cast through the windows across the blocks and books and desk and bed of the child's room; remnants of a life that was both familiar and foreign simultaneously. There was a man dead at his feet and he honestly wasn't certain whether it was illusion or reality and he knew instinctively that that meant he had lost.

_Everything was washed in red and I could feel it dripping down my forehead, _another life murmured, _coloring my vision until the red was all I could see. Then the padding came free at last and it was just plaster and concrete beneath and there was blood, more blood and pain and then- at long last- there was finally escape._

_Finally silence._

There is a man dead on the floor and a woman standing over him smiling.

He recognizes them vaguely from the room he just left.

_Who?_

There was a hand on the back of his neck, a steady unrelenting pressure, and his fingers felt numb, quaking and uncertain where they gripped the trident.

"Did you really think I would go to all that trouble and not find some way to tag my property? My, my, but you are incredibly stupid sometimes. Still, you're marvelous in action," the man's voice breathed, a tone caught, splayed out between pride and disdain with a heavy dollop of awe. "A true masterpiece. You're so much more than we had hoped. You all are."

He sees them enter the room, sees the woman summon and discard her illusion. Sees Ken kill her, sees the three of them go their separate ways.

_Mama? It hurts. Mama… please? Mama?_Another life whispered**, **pained and hopeful, calling for a parent who would never come.

"We won't be used by you," he whispered, uncertain and strange. His legs felt as if they were made of rough water, dipping and bowing and churning beneath him. "I'll destroy you all first."

"Don't be ridiculous, you'll do no such thing," the man replied, laughter in his voice. "I made you. You owe me your existence."

_It was all about preparation and presentation after all. A dainty blood trail led to the foot of the man and the eye would follow the path up his body to the shining spill of intestines that spread across the floor to tangle around the foot of the woman who was resplendent in a dress soaked with blood and fouler things. Yes, I'm quite satisfied with this piece, _another life whispered._ Quite satisfied indeed._

"No, _they_ made me, you just provided the spare parts," Mukuro snarled, fingers finally obeying his will and tightening around the handle of his trident, twitching the weapon up.

A hand against his chin, "Temper, temper, piccolo, be that as it may, I still have rather more right to that body than you do. You're my son after all."

_I used the cane to steady myself as I pushed up from the bench. It was cold and my joints were stiff from having sat so long,_ another life commented, wry and amused._ The weather was turning and winter always made me feel my years most keenly. I'd been so long waiting for that silly chit that I might as well have been frozen through the way my joints ached and crackled as I turned towards home. It was nothing a nip of whiskey and a nice, warm cuppa wouldn't fix right up, but I did find it quite vexing to be left waiting without notice or explanation._

"Oh? How would you like it if I were to return it in pieces? Would you prefer it quartered or halved? I feel that Ken and Chikusa are owed a portion for what they have suffered here, but I'm negotiable on percentage."

The man scoffed, "They should be grateful. We have made them something considerably more than they could have ever hoped to be on their own. You all have such potential. They're really quite extraordinary. You're all going to be very useful to us in the future."

_The flames of Xanxus' wrath burned and I screamed, they screamed, screamed and died for their transgressions, for his ambition, _said yet another life, pained and discontent.

"You really think I won't just kill you now?"

Fingers tapped a staccato beat against the back of his neck, before gripping and squeezing. It's a familiar feeling, terribly familiar, the grip of this hand against his throat. "If you were capable of such a thing, I don't imagine we'd be having this conversation at all, topolino. No, I'm afraid that you are in no position to be making demands or issuing threats. I may not be able to control you now- this experiment with Noemi was proof enough of that, I suppose- but I'm afraid you won't be able to find or harm me either. I am beyond you. So, _run_, topolino, take them and _flee_. Do as you will, become stronger, learn to use and control your powers. But know; know deep down in the depths of your tattered, patchwork soul, that you will never truly be able to escape us. You won't be able to run forever and I can be very patient when needs must. You'll come home to your family one day."

"That's not going to happen. I'd rather _die_."

"And what if you do? I'll just bring you back," the man replied, a smile in his voice. "I've done it before. I can do it again. There is no Hell in which you can hide, none that will have you now for you are meant for all of them and none. You could tear yourself apart and I would catch all the pieces and stitch you back together again and again. You're my beloved creation, piccolo, and you _will_ make our family great again. A day will come when I will be able to reclaim my property and if I have to kill those two to do so, I will. I can always make others like _them_."

He awakens on the floor of a bedroom.

His head aches fiercely, his mouth tastes like ashes and his stomach is heavy with dread. He feels like he had a nightmare, some terrible dream that clings to him like tar and leaves his brain feeling like it has been dunked in raw sewage. It's faded, indistinct, but he can feel phantom fingers around his throat and he touches his neck to wipe the feeling away. He can't quite remember what he dreamed of, but he knows it was bad and that's more than enough.

He despises this place.

The room he finds himself in is passingly familiar, but little beyond that. He remembers vaguely stumbling across it while he was looking for fresh clothes and supplies. Remembers coming inside, as if pulled, drawn by a vague half-formed memory of a life lived in this place, on that plaid bedspread, reading those heavy, leather-bound books.

There had been a small pile of child's blocks on the desk, odd and out of place in this characterless room. He remembers that much, but no more.

He pushes himself up slowly, gingerly, onto his elbows, dropping the block clutched in his hand. He blinks at it, surprised, it's small and red and the edges are sharp enough that they've sliced open the delicate skin of his palm in several places. He's pretty sure he can remember picking it up from the desk before he… passed out?

Must have been.

And that would make the second time he'd passed out today which was somewhat embarrassing. Of course, it had been a rather long and busy day, so perhaps it wasn't so very strange.

He felt unsettled, sick, when he stared too long at that block, like the world was swimming around him and he wondered vaguely if this was what happened when he overused his powers, such as they are. It hadn't been this bad when he'd woken up earlier in the office with Ken and Chikusa, but now… now he feels _awful_. He leaves the block on the floor and slowly pushes himself onto aching knees before stumbling to unsteady feet. He rubs the blood on his hand carelessly across his shirt, the cuts are thin and shallow enough that the blood is barely a trickle, but they still sting distantly, more annoying than painful.

He hates this room.

It stinks of fear and desperation.

There's a dresser filled with clothing and he pulls out things he thinks will fit Chikusa and Ken. Everything feels strangely formal, crisp and clean and unused, too neatly pressed and folded and uniform. Everything he looks at in this room just makes him feel sicker, makes the queasiness in his stomach worse. It's like touching remnants of another life, one that is anathema to him now. He piles several pairs of pants, shirts, socks and underwear on the bed, but balks at the idea of wearing any of it himself. He doesn't want these clothes, they don't belong to him and he doesn't _want_ them even though he has a feeling that if he were to pull them on they would all fit perfectly. They'll hang a little long on Ken, a little short on Chikusa, but they should be good enough. Should be. He hauls the pile up into his arms and leaves the little room behind without a backward glance.

It isn't his.

It never _was_.

He wasn't that boy.

He didn't even _want_ to be.

Ken is sleeping, snoring, slumped against the bathroom door when he arrives in the bedroom. He doesn't bother to look at the bodies as he passes them. He doesn't have time for the dead. He sets the precariously balanced pile of clothing down beside Ken. The shower is a loud rush of sound this close to the bathroom door and he assumes Chikusa is inside. He touches tentative fingers to Ken's face, wiping a bit of blood from his cheek. Ken mumbles in his sleep turning into the touch and Mukuro draws his hand back, standing up quickly.

He feels that darkness within him rear up, roil as it had when the woman was killed and he shoves it back down, deep and deeper still, pushing it into the well and nailing it shut. He's shaking when he comes back to himself and he stumbles back and away. Just wanting to put some distance between them. He really shouldn't touch them, especially him, not for a while. Not until he has this under control. It was bad enough before, but after that woman… he wasn't quite… quite right.

He swallowed hard and while he didn't run from the room, it was a close thing. He stayed away for a long time, making a point to search the house from top to bottom. He found clothes that fit him decently well, loose and baggy and casual and worn and got cleaned up quickly in one of the bathrooms upstairs. Afterwards, his hair wet and dripping against the thin shoulders of his stolen shirt, he went through all each room of the house, snagging things he thought would be useful and shoving them in his pockets. He transferred those things to backpacks later once he found a few stashed in an equipment room downstairs.

He found the bullets in a safe on the third floor. He didn't have the code for the safe, of course, but one of those lives rattling around inside him knew enough about such things to allow him to short the circuits and crack the safe with relative ease. He burnt his fingers, but the door swung open revealing the box of bullets and a gun atop a stack of paperwork. The box feels strangely warm in his hands. Several of his lives had been spent handling firearms so he checked the chambers, pulled out the preloaded ammo and put the safety on before tucking it into one of the backpacks alongside the special bullets which were already nestled down in the bottom of the bag on top of a thin, fuzzy blanket he'd found earlier. There's some cash in the safe as well, enough to get them started though it probably wouldn't last long. He tossed it in the bag and turned his attention back to the paperwork.

He swept the desk clear of the few personal items on its surface and tossed the stack of paperwork crap down before clamoring up on the desk to sit cross-legged with the papers spread out across his lap while he scanned through them for useful information.

He found plans and documentation and, for the special bullets, notes about their construction; he set those aside after reading them over. Most of the paperwork was made up of things he doesn't care about or of very little use to him: deeds and titles and tidbits about allied families and blackmail information. It was a simple enough matter to either memorize or discard as unimportant each new piece as required.

He added the important things to the pile he had started building with the possession bullet documentation and tossed the rest to scatter across the floor. He found passports for a man named Alonzo Vinciguerra who he recognized by the scar on his face as one of the men he'd seen in the hospital room. This body's father, perhaps, if the woman was to be believed, not that he cared one way or the other about such things. Though he didn't recall seeing him among the people downstairs which meant he was probably alive somewhere which was… disappointing. Because if he were alive that might mean he was planning on returning for these things.

Sometimes plans just didn't work out as one hoped.

He added those passports to the growing pile along with a single passport and a birth certificate for a Salvatore Vinciguerra. He didn't have to do more than glance at the blue-eyed boy in the picture to know that face. He'd seen that face more than once through the eyes of others and in the shiny metal surfaces downstairs. Even if the eyes were a bit different now, the face was just the same.

When he was finally done sorting through the last of the documentation, he zipped up the backpack and shouldered it before snatching up the thick pile of paperwork featuring the passports and personal documentation as well as the possession bullet information and the empty extra backpacks and hurried back downstairs.

There was a gas stove in the kitchen and he cranked one of the knobs to the side, there are several soft clicks before the gas burst into flames around the burner. He smiled and dropped the paperwork on the burner and stepped away, letting the flames eat it all up.

Some small part of him whispered that those plans could have been useful, that that passport might be needed. He choses to ignore it, content to watch all of it turn to so much ash and soot and blow away, staining the counters and tiles black. He almost enjoyed the stink of plastic burning as the passports curl and char, burning far more slowly than the rest.

His name is Mukuro Rokudou and he wants absolutely nothing to do with the boy this body once belonged to and those bullets…. he'd use the ones that existed to destroy the mafia since they were partially, ultimately, responsible for what had happened to them, for their creation, but once they were gone… he didn't want to be reliant on something Esterneo had built.

Not when there were other options available to him.

Once the fire had done its work, Mukuro turned the burner off with a flick of his hand and walked back upstairs to fetch Ken and Chikusa so they could leave this place behind once and for all.

**END NOTES:**

So, as I mentioned last time, the unreliable narrator was indeed completely unreliable.

So, that said, as I mentioned up top, this is the second part of a three chapter arc. The last chapter was the 'Salvatore' portion of this arc, this was the 'Mukuro' portion of this arc and the next chapter is the 'Resolution' portion of the arc and will see the story move forward out of the prison and on to Namimori (at long last).

As usual, extensive notes can be found on the Archive of Our Own version of this chapter. Comments/Reviews/Feedback in general are always very much appreciated. Thanks so much for reading


	11. Stitch

_"Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters."_  
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

-ooo-  
**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 110  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
March 9, 2003

**MUKURO **

The interior of the room was hot, dark, and moist and he could hear someone breathing. It was like stepping inside a mouth; so much so that he almost expected to feel the squish of a tongue beneath his bare feet, but instead his toes found the same slick hardwoods and rough knitted rugs that had been on the floor of that room all those years ago.

"This place?" He questioned, a wry smirk tugging at his lips. "Fifteen years of exotic locals, a plethora of murders, and a clear history of abuse to choose from and this is what lives at the heart of this Gordian knot of this memory burying bullshit? A sauna? This is _disappointing_."

He spread his hands out, reached out into the air in front of him and felt nothing but more empty air. He shuffled forward one step and then another into the dark and a gust of wind, warm and foul, blew across his face as his toes brushed something cold and sharp.

A bell chimes and his breath comes in harsh, panicked gasps as he remembered quite suddenly the last time he'd been in this room, the last time he'd felt this way. He pressed his hands against his temples, but that feeling… that feeling of cracking, spilling open isn't there. There's only the sound and the feeling of blood leaking out across his toes. Still his breath caught, dread coiled around his heart like a serpent and began to squeeze, as he stood paralyzed waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting to feel him again, to hear that hated voice whispering through his mind.

But, no, that wasn't… that couldn't be right. This wasn't… he wasn't there. This wasn't real… none of this was real. This was just a place that lived in his head, a fractured memory of a place he used to live and no matter how much it might look like that place or feel like that place it still wasn't real. An illusion was only an illusion even here. The past was only the past. If the past few weeks had taught him nothing else, it had taught him that.

So, the question became… why was he here? What could there possibly be left to see? To hear? To remember?

Soft laughter, familiar and terrible, rang out sounding a little rough from disuse.

He knew that laughter… that voice.

No voice was as familiar as your own, after all.

"I've been waiting for you to come," the voice commented, softly. "For a really long time. I'm glad you're finally here. Whatever happens now, I think the waiting was the very worst part. My head is a very lonely place to be."

The gunshot was deafening and close enough that he could feel the burn of powder against his cheek.

-ooo-**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 570  
THE GANG  
NEW YORK  
December 4, 2001

**LANCIA**

"We don't _have_ to watch it," Ken pouted, his expression making it really damn obvious that he felt otherwise regardless of the reluctant offer of reprieve.

Mukuro glared out at him from beneath a fuzzy blanket, eyes glittering in the low light of the flickering television. "As I have mentioned previously, I do not _care_ what we watch. If you want to watch the stupid puppet movie then put the stupid thing on already."

"Theyre muppets not puppets, it's like a completely different thing." Ken insisted as he shifted his pleading gaze to Lancia. It wasn't _quite_ asking permission, as the little brats had never really asked for his permission for anything, but he'd noticed that they'd been checking with him more often lately. He wasn't sure what they wanted from him, only that it had started happening around about the same time that Mukuro had started acting even more paranoid and introverted than usual. He wasn't sure what the fuck they were looking for. Approval? Disapproval? A gauge as to how normal people reacted to shit? He had no damn clue.

Ken had apparently found that battered tape at a swap meet he and Chikusa had wandered through that morning and he'd presented it to them all proudly like it was the best thing ever instead of a big, dingy white plastic case with a bunch of smiling puppets on the front in some old timey Christmas kit. He didn't even say that it was Chikusa who'd picked the damn thing out, but it was completely damn obvious from how hard he was selling it as it was from how red the kid's face was as he sat on the couch, tugging and fiddling with his hat waiting for a verdict.

They'd been dancing around the idea of Christmas since the season really rolled into full gear a couple weeks ago. New York more than any other place they'd ever been together, just never let you forget for a single fucking second that the holiday was imminent. Music in the stores, in the streets, decorations every-damn-where, bells ringing, men dressed up in shabby red suits on street corners and in plenty of the stores, people throwing up little blinking lights and shiny silver and red garlands across every surface that dared to hold still long enough. For a city full of people who generally had no interest in looking at each other, they sure seemed to like the idea of looking all that shiny holiday crap.

Of course that was one thing the boys seemed to have in common with them. Even Mukuro, who rarely left the apartment, he'd seen more than once out on the balcony or with his fingers pressed against the window in the dark, staring greedily out at the cheerfully well-lit city beyond. Apparently even pint-sized bastards liked pretty, shiny things. In contrast to the subtly of Mukuro's interest, Ken bounced from place to place pointing and singing off-key along with the music pumped through the store speakers and yammering on and on about this house or that store display mostly, Lancia had noticed, to cover for the way Chikusa seemed to stutter to a stop in front of the particularly bright displays and linger there for minutes at a time until Ken managed to subtly crash into him, waking him from whatever weirdo little trance he'd fallen into and hurrying him on down the road.

He was pretty sure at some point he was going to have to ask them if they wanted to get a damn tree and he really wasn't looking forward to finding one and hauling the damn thing back across town and up all those fucking stairs. He'd still do it, obviously, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

Ken was still looking at him so he shrugged to indicate he was fine with the puppet thing and turned his attention away from the TV area and back to mincing garlic.

"Okay, Muppet Christmas thingy it is," Ken grinned and Chikusa curled down into his own blanket now that the matter was settled, pulling it up around his ears and burrowing down until only the top of his hat was visible over the couch arm.

They'd discovered during the last couple weeks that while their airy open plan apartment was great during the summer, it was a real bitch to heat in the winter. The theromostat was broken so it kept resetting at odd times, so the temperature in the apartment alternated wildly between freezing and boiling with very little middle ground. Ken, of course, was the only one completely unfazed by the fluctuations, still hopping about the place in a t-shirt and shorts as if he didn't even feel the difference between one and the other. Mukuro, on the other hand, spent pretty much all his time huddled beneath blankets regardless of the current temperature which Lancia had decided a while ago that had more to do with some latent desire to live in a fucking cave because he was the world's deadliest, moodiest teenager. He'd seen him do it often enough in the heat of summer that he knew for a damn fact it had nothing to do with the temperature.

Ken popped the video cassette case open and took out the cartridge inside, shoving it into the VCR and jabbing the play button. "Lancia! Can you make popcorn?"

"Make your own damn popcorn after you eat dinner, kid," Lancia called back, spreading butter and minced garlic into the loaf of French bread he'd picked up at the market and wrapping it up before shoving it in the oven and setting the timer. "And eat your fucking salad this time. If you don't eat properly, you're gonna make yourself fucking sick."

"Yeah, yeah," Ken grumbled, but the smile on his face as he dropped down on the couch beside Chikusa made it clear he was pleased about... something. If he didn't know better he'd say Ken actually enjoyed being reprimanded.

Fucking _teenagers_.

The trailers played while he chopped mushrooms and finished browning sausage for the sauce, adding it in and setting it to simmer before coming around the island to lean back against the counter to watch, crossing his arms over his chest as the first notes of cheery music began to play.

Mukuro groaned loudly and pulled the blanket more firmly over his head.

Lancia smiled and shot a grinning Ken a thumb's up, he liked this movie already.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 5?2  
THE GANG  
NEW YORK  
De?e?ber 12, 2?1

**MUKURO**

He came back to himself in the taxi on the way to the port. He'd been dreaming of… something. He'd been somewhere else and there was something he was supposed to do… something important….

The slice of something sharp across his fingers…

…No, that wasn't… was it his toes?

Something...

Why couldn't he remember?

What was it?

The taxi bumped over a particularly large pothole, tossing them all into the air and each other before gravity slammed them back to the seat much to the displeasure of his aching head.

While he'd been out the morning had dawned grey and dismal, the air in the taxi was moist and warm, fogging the windows so that when he turned his head to look out past Chikusa, who was fast asleep beside him, the world was only vague shadows and bright lights that hurt his eyes. Ken and Lancia were jammed in on his other side, talking quietly about what they would and what they definitely wouldn't miss about the city.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about how this was his fault, that they had to run again, that they had even come here in the first place.

He felt awful, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth, his head was a raw, frayed, throbbing exposed nerve. He'd spent hours issuing final commands and rescinding connections, closing accounts and settling business affairs, acquiring new assets and ditching them when they'd done what he needed. He'd just spent however much time since they'd all clamored into the taxi setting instruction for the head of Tartaruga Famiglia. He was a proud man who'd wished to make a big statement rather than sink quietly into the retirement his sons had planned for him until the cancer eating him away from the inside out finally killed him. He'd have his vengeance against everyone who had visited insult upon him, be that insult real or perceived, and then he'd go out on his own terms. It was hardly a perfect or flawless scenario, but it was the best he could manage in the space of hours.

There were still a number of things he would have liked to have done with them before orchestrating an end to those various players- plenty of information he didn't yet have, tasks left incomplete- but nothing that made it worth the risk of letting them live. He needed to close all the doors, burn all the bridges he could before he could take stock, before he could be certain. It would be too dangerous otherwise. There were still a few last loose ends to snuff out, but those would have to wait a few hours so that they could complete the last tasks assigned them.

"Mukuro?"

He blinked and reopened his eyes to stare at the boy beside him, his voice dry and bored as he spoke, "Ken?"

"We're here."

"Obviously," Mukuro replied, settling back against the seat, "Where else would you be?"

"No, I mean, like _here_ here. Like at the place. Like as in we need to get out of the taxi now," Ken grinned. "Though you're awesome when you're punchy."

Mukuro swatted at him irritably as Chikusa opened his door and slid out of the cab wordlessly.

"Shut up, I'm tired. You'll be lucky if I don't have you running language drills in Marathi for the next month."

"Cranky. I don't even know what that means. Want me to carry you?"

"No, I want you to shut up," Mukuro grumbled, purposefully scooting out Chikusa's side of the taxi as Ken laughed. His head was already spinning worrisomely by the time his feet hit the ground and by the time he actually managed to pull himself to his feet he realized that he might actually be in trouble. He managed two whole steps before he pitched forward, momentum sending him lurching towards the asphalt. Chikusa caught him with an arm around his chest and a grunt of effort.

"Let us help," his voice was quiet, barely audible even from inches away.

"I'm not so weak that I need to be… coddled," he grumbled, rubbing a hand across his face as Chikusa helped him back to his feet.

"We support each other, right?" Chikusa replied mulishly. Chikusa didn't dig his heels in on things often, content to just follow the course they set, but when he did there was no moving him. Mukuro sighed and glanced up to meet Chikusa's gaze not surprised to find he was already looking away, but he could practically feel the worry and disapproval radiating off him like heat.

Ken was bouncing on his heels near the rear of the car, waiting for the trunk to open while Lancia was leaning in the driver's door talking to the cabbie, paying the man and probably also threatening him if his grip on the cab's roof were any indication of the tone of the conversation. "Fine," he breathed finally, pressing a hand against Chikusa's shoulder and using it to steady himself. "Just until we get on the stupid boat. Ken can carry the bags."

"Hey, I'm not a porter, you know," Ken grouched, though he was already busy shouldering their bags anyway.

"How do you even know that word?" Chikusa inquired and Mukuro felt Chikusa's arm around his back bracing him, supporting part of his weight as they moved towards the customs office.

"You up for this?" Ken murmured as he fell into to step beside them as they reached the building. Mukuro gave him a narrow-eyed glare even though it was kind of challenging to do it properly when he was starting to look more like a yellow blur than a person due to the squiggly lines that were starting to swim across his vision. If he were honest, he might have told him that he felt like a wad of chewed gum, that his head was beating a rhythm in perfect time with each step they took, that he was almost absolutely certain that he wasn't going to be able to do this. That possessing anyone was quite beyond his power at the moment.

But what other choice was there?

He'd meant to get around to replacing their lost passports ever since they'd escaped from Traditore, but he'd simply never gotten around to it. Whether that was carelessness or another sign that someone had been mucking about in his head, he wasn't completely certain, but it mattered little enough now. If they wanted to leave the country he'd need to be able to do this. Just a little more, a little more and he could rest.

"Stay here, I'll be right back," Lancia commented suddenly, ducking ahead of them and jogging into the waiting area.

"What the hell's he doing?" Ken muttered and Chikusa shrugged as they came to a stop and waited for the big man to return.

Lancia was back a few minutes later, bopping Ken on the head with a stack of passports, "Had to pay out the fucking nose for the rush job, but we're set for now. They're hot so they'll only work for a few days, but I figured they should be enough to get us out of here, you'll just have to fudge the names and the photos. You got enough juice left for that?"

And he was so relieved and exhausted that the urge to cry was almost overwhelming and the idea of _that_ so mortifying and it made him want to push Lancia into the sea or beat him to death with a shoe just for making him feel that way. Something, anything, to erase the awful feelings of guilt and gratitude that are threatening to choke him even as they tied his stomach into knots. "I'm fine," he managed finally and he can tell he's failing at keeping it all under wraps when he feels Ken's arm snake around his waist, fingers curling against his side as if he needed the extra support when Chikusa was already clinging to him like a barnacle. "I would have been fine, I don't need you to…"

"Yeah, yeah, I _know_, you're a fount of limitless power that never tires and doesn't need nothing from nobody. I didn't do it for _you_. I just don't want to stick around here and get murdered in the crossfire by whatever dumb bastards have you little fuckers running scared. This isn't a favor, kids, it's an act of self-preservation." He grabbed the bags back up and waved the passports in their direction as he started off towards the entry point. "Now let's hurry up and get him onboard before he starts fucking bleeding again. If they see that they'll think he has a fucking infectious disease or something and then we won't be going anywhere."

"_He_ can _hear_ you, you realize," Mukuro ground out between clenched teeth, annoyed by the swell of relief he felt as Ken and Chikusa both tightened their hold on him and they made their way towards the boarding area.

"I hope so, you decide to take a nap now and we're gonna have a tough time getting through security since these passports are for Maria Martinez and her three daughters."

Ken snorted, "Oh, I don't know, you could be a Maria."

"And I'm sure you'd make a lovely Isabella, but it's probably better if the names on our passports match the names on our tickets. The fewer eyebrows we raise, the less chance folks are gonna remember us coming through here."

By the time they made it past the customs officials and their zillion questions the migraine was in full swing it was all he could do just to keep his feet shuffling forward until he was finally able to collapse onto a bed in their cabin. He couldn't even bring himself to complain when Ken and Chikusa fitted themselves in on either side of him. He fell asleep listening to the familiar comfort of their bickering as the ship left New York behind.

He woke several times. Choked down a cold hamburger under Lancia's watchful eyes, shooed Ken and Chikusa away to sleep in their own space, and tumbled down into dreams and darkness again and again.

Night had fallen and he was dreaming about the ship floating on an endless sea. He was everywhere and nowhere, which was a relief. He though, perhaps, that he was the ship itself since all he could feel was the gentle sway of the ocean waves beneath him and he felt strangely peaceful.

"I know you're there," a voice called out softly and he flinched glancing up at the sky above, but there was nothing to see there besides the darkness of the night. "I know you can hear me, Salvatore… or do you prefer I call you Mukuro Rokudou? I've always felt that name was needlessly pretentious." It was a man's voice and it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, slithered through him, slipping inside all the cracks within him, filth he'd never be able to clear away. Hands grasped at invisible anchors buried long ago and forgotten beneath his skin, pulling uncomfortably, like hooks sunk too deep, and then he was inside and that awful feeling resolved itself into the impression of a man, a projection, an illusion, but one he was too familiar with. He'd seen that face in nightmares and memories of that one terrible, glorious day for years. Seen that face gazing down at him, that self-assured little smile curving his lips as if everything had gone just as he had planned, so satisfied, so _smug_. He'd known that man hadn't been among the dead of Esterneo, because _of course_ he hadn't been.

Fear lurched drunkenly through him clawing at the walls of his soul as every fiber and nerve and instinct squealed and rattled in protest against that unwelcome feeling of invasion. Was this how the people he invaded felt? Or was this just because of who this man was to him?

Alonzo Vinciguerra laughed and it was soft and sinister and it made him want to vomit all over his stupid, shiny shoes. "Come now, topolino. I realize all teenagers are meant to be insufferable, but the least you could do is say hello to your father since I've gone to all the trouble of finding you. I hope you realize how trying this is without the aid of a possession bullet… of course, with the advantages I have given you, I don't imagine that actually is something you're capable of appreciating. I imagine it's all quite simple for you. But then I suppose you know what they say about spoilt children. Still, ignoring me while I'm connected to your mind is quite infantile especially since you practically invited me here with that little display of yours. If you'd have preferred me to come to see you in person, you really should have just left a forwarding address instead of lighting your building on fire.

_Topolino._

Little mouse.

Why did that word set his teeth on edge?

The ship's cabin began to take form around them, no doubt his brain making an attempt to make sense of the feeling of violation by trying to ground it in the physical realm, illusion attempting to bring about form and substance instinctively as that man tried to grappled for control of the environment, tried to fool his mind into believing he was the one in control and failing miserably. His hold was old and tremulous, after all, wavering and uncertain.

He had no true power here. He was merely a tourist, a spectator, and while he'd been able to reach him, grab hold and force his way though his tattered defenses, the man lacked the finesse to fully utilize his own flames within this space without the possession bullets to help overwhelm hi. It was a relief as well as somewhat unsettling to realize he wasn't entirely sure how this same scenario would play out with those damnable bullets in play.

"Was I not clear enough when I shredded the mind of your little spy? Should I have sent you a 'please stay the fuck away from us' card instead? I don't believe Hallmark makes an occasion card for that, but I suppose I could have gotten something blank and then scribbled in the sentiment myself. Would that have, perhaps, helped you to comprehend that one very obvious message?" Mukuro snarled aloud, slamming illusions into place, grounding the space. Pale featureless ceiling and without windows or doors; a container, no, a _prison cell_ that was fit to trap and hold them both isolated and well away from the others.

"My little… oh, I see," the crooked smirk on that man's hated face was disconcerting. "So, that was meant to serve as a warning? Interesting. To me it seemed rather more a childish cry for attention. A bit crude, perhaps, but effective and really quite impressive in its way. You've managed to advance surprisingly well considering you only had instinct and whatever documentation you stole to guide you in the use of your powers. Unfortunately, that little tantrum of yours cost me both a excellent test subject and a potential financial backer as, obviously, the child's father was none too pleased to discover what you had done to his son."

An image was projected on the wall of a child, a little younger than he was, sprawled across a bed. Sightless eyes staring at nothing, face and blankets crusted with drool, body twitching slightly, blood trickled from his ear, running down along his chin to dribble onto the blanket.

"If his father actually cared for him, he wouldn't have allowed you to use him as a guinea pig in the first place," Mukuro snapped, folding his arms across his chest as he observed the scene, careful to keep his face free of expression. It was more of a struggle than he expected. He couldn't let this touch him. He didn't care about that boy. He didn't care. "Sons always pay the price for the sins of their fathers, one way or another."

"Oh? Do you think that you'll pay for my sins one day, Mukuro Rokudou?" He asked, sounding amused by the thought.

"I think this whole filthy world has been and will be paying the price for your sins for some time to come," Mukuro replied, pacing away from him to press his hands against the cool walls. Pulling together another illusion hurt, but he could already tell that illusions were the only way he was going to pry that man out of his brain. Illusions had always been the one thing that came most naturally to him, the one thing that he could still manage when he had exhausted every other power and skill at his disposal. So he created an illusion of cold, flowing water, allowed it to seam through the cracks to flood the little room in which they stood. It flowed over his bare toes, helping him to focus on what needed to be done. It was fortunate that all he left to do was to tie up those last loose ends. He pulled threads and unraveled the final cords that made up his network with quick, brutal efficiency; ignored the heavy burn of exhaustion as he issued final orders and reigned in the power he'd expended keeping those contacts open and on task. He let what little power he had left in the end flow into the water pooling around their knees, making it solid and turbulent and as real as he could manage.

"You do realize that you won't be able to hurt me with such a weak effort, don't you? You're talented, Salvatore, you always have been, but you've always lacked proper control. You won't be able to damage me without doing far greater damage to yourself and your paths don't work here." He looked so smug as he said it. As if he knew everything, as if he understood _anything_ about him.

Alonso Vinciguerra moved through the water as if it were barely worthy of his notice, coming closer to him as if he were the child he appeared to be, unworthy of fear or respect.

He tried to remember how to breathe.

He was Mukuro Rokudou not Salvatore Vinciguerra and there was no reason to be afraid.

He might live in his skin, but he was not _him_.

He was not _afraid_ of this man.

He was _not_.

"Now, let us discuss reparations. You owe me restitution for what you have destroyed, after all. I would consider taking the Kakimoto boy off your hands..."

Mukuro glanced up sharply at the suggestion, uneasy, "You just tried to have him killed, what changed your mind?"

The man had the gall to laugh, "I _what_? Oh, don't be _absurd_, Salvatore. You're our children and I've invested far too much time and money into your development to simply eliminate you when there is still a chance I'll be able to bring you to heel. I do believe someone has been having fun at your expense, but that's to be expected when you've made as many enemies as you have. You should really choose your targets with more care in future, Salvatore. Having no allies has done you no favors and made you a laughably easy target."

"Stop calling me that," he murmured distracted, as his mind whirled around that idea that it hadn't been what they thought.

That had always been the nightmare, after all. The secret, squirming fear that kept them together, that kept them up at night, kept them moving. That one day Esterneo would come for them and somehow it wouldn't matter how much they'd grown or how strong they'd become, it simply wouldn't be _enough_. That nothing would _ever_ be enough to keep them alive and free.

So, when they'd heard that word from an assassin's lips, they hadn't even questioned it, hadn't doubted it even for a moment. They'd just _reacted_.

No, that wasn't quite fair.

_He__'__d_ reacted.

He'd lashed out and ripped himself to shreds in a panic, frightened and ready to take the blame. So eager to do whatever it took to keep them safe, to keep _himself_ safe and so he'd forced them to run, to hide like fools... like children fleeing the boogeyman. He'd made them leave behind the closest they'd ever come to home.

But… who would know them well enough to take advantage of that weakness? It wasn't as if they'd advertised that they had a connection to Esterneo. Not even Lancia had known, not really. So how... how had someone, anyone, known what Esterneo, what using that threat would mean to them, what it would cause him to do?

He hadn't realized he'd said those last words out loud, hadn't realized that that man had kept moving closer an inch a time while he was lost in thought, until a hand coiled in the knot of his hair, winding it tight around his fingers and giving it a painful yank, forcing him to look up at him. His smirk was thin, tight and wide. "I should think it would be obvious, but you always were so very _simple_ when it came to sentiment. So, allow me to spell it out for you: there is only one person traveling with your little band of misfits whose loyalty would be in question. So, tell me: do you honestly think he _cares_ for you after all you've done? That he would seek to protect you without your illusions forcing the issue? Do you honestly have such confidence in your abilities that you believe him incapable of such betrayal?"

Mukuro ground his teeth together, glaring up at the man, not quite certain why he wasn't slapping him away or crushing him beneath a ton of rubble. He'd done far more damage with far less and he knew, he _knew_ that the connection went both ways. That he could force him back into his own body and follow him down, persuade him to bludgeon himself to death with a rock if he could just summon the will to do it.

And yet…

And yet...

And yet he just stood there paralyzed by the feeling that he had done something wrong, that he deserved this, that he should be begging forgiveness and it was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Everything felt _wrong_.

_He_ felt wrong.

Like he was some weak, feeble, helpless… _child_.

But…

But…

He'd never asked anyone for forgiveness. Not from any of his many victims. Not from Ken or Chikusa. Not from Lancia.

He sure as hell wasn't about to start with this man.

Not even if his life _depended_ on it.

Mukuro laughed and he knew it sounded harsh and forced, all bravado, but it made him feel better to even be able to pull together that much. "You don't know anything about him or me if you think any of that is true."

"Don't I? Well, I suppose it hardly matters. Believe what you will, it matters not to me. The fact remains that I am still owed some form of restitution or I will be forced to retaliate in kind and I imagine you, of all people, must realize how poor a decision it would be to force my hand. Now, as I said, I would be happy to take Kakimoto, but I suppose Joshima would do just as well. I don't imagine he has more than a few years left and he was always more trouble than he was worth, but I suppose I could find a use for him. Or, if you're so dedicated to looking after them as you pretend to be, I suppose I wouldn't mind picking up where I left off with you. I could make you something truly extraordinary, Salvatore."

Funny. A moment ago it had seemed a Herculean effort just to keep from apologizing to him for the inconvenience, but now….

"I told you to stop calling me by that _name_," Mukuro roared as the water rose, sudden and relentless enough to drown them both, flooding the space and bursting it at the seams. He let it rage. Let it crash through his mind, bringing down barriers, tearing loose the bonds that kept the tattered pieces of his soul stitched tight together and held beneath the surface. A hundred thousand memories screamed through him with the force of a hurricane, giving chase as the man who thought he was his father wrestled for control, tried to break the illusions that were tearing through his defenses as quickly as he was building them. A catastrophic flash flood of information that swept through to wash away everything in its path before finding its way out through all the cracks. His power was burning through him, drowning the limits and everything he'd ever been, carrying them both along for the ride as it flushed everything away. He'd spent so long being afraid of this, of losing the person he had fought to become to all those other lives, so much more certain of what and who they'd been than he ever was, that it was almost cathartic to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down with his own will.

There might be nothing of Mukuro Rokudou left in the end, but… he'd never liked himself much anyway.

"The ship's going down, old man." He called, laughing, dizzy and careless. "Feel free to bail out or sink down to Hell with me. I'm good either way."

"What do you think you're playing at? You belong to _me_, Salvatore. And one day I will collect what I am due," his expression was ugly, twisted with hatred and frustration.

It was an incredibly satisfying sight.

Mukuro offered him a vicious smirk as he flicked him off, "The only person I belong to is myself."

He felt one last surge of anger from that man and then he was gone, run back to wherever he'd come from and it felt like victory. Though there was no time to savor it as the rush of memories filled up every part of him until there was nothing left but the terrible cacophony of thousands of voices crying out in dozens of languages and a darkness so profound it seemed to swallow the world.

**-ooo-**

It seemed he'd spent all his life afraid of being overrun, of drowning in what they'd been and he likely always would be. There were, after all, many things he didn't want to know, to see, to experience. Things that made him feel uneasy and wretched, that made him feel lost and uncertain and sick. But… he'd been wrong to think his sense of self so fragile that it would shatter or vanish beneath the weight of what had been. All these years, it had always felt as if they were pressing against the boundaries, testing him, but perhaps they had only wished to be heard. Perhaps even the lost souls of the long dead could never leave behind the desire to be known or understood. He didn't know for certain and being bombarded from all sides by a half dozen voices shouting for his attention, throwing memories of words and sensations at him all at once hadn't given him any great insights into any of them. All he knew for certain was that while it was awful, while they shouted, bombarded him with memory and sensation and too much, too much, too much… it wasn't the end of him. Instead, one by one, they quieted and returned to their places within him and the stitching that bound them fell back into place as tight as it had ever been without any help from him. And, just like that, he was once more alone in his head, more alone than he'd been in years and it was a relief even as it also left him feeling oddly bereft.

Still, the important bits remained, the vital connections, the only bonds he truly needed. He could feel Ken and Chikusa as strongly as he ever had, burning bright and singular. The connection with Lancia was weaker than it had been, but it remained as well, sealed by all the years they'd spent together. Of course, he highly doubted any of the compulsion-based illusions he'd set in place there had survived. Lancia would be free to leave them, to kill him; he'd be free to do whatever he pleased unless he put new illusions in place, but… he didn't have enough energy left to do anything about that. And even if he did… he wasn't sure he would. The thought of Lancia off his leash probably should have worried him more than it did, but… he was so tired. It wasn't as if he trusted him anymore than he was willing to relinquish the hold he had on him, but... right now there was nothing to be done but to gamble on his good nature and the affection he held for Chikusa and Ken to keep him.

There were things though… things he needed to make sure they knew.

_There was something I needed to do._

_Something_ _…_ _._

Just in case.

He reached out to him in the dark, stumbled down the winding way into Lancia's dreams to coax him away into one they could share where it would be easier to communicate with him. Speaking to someone in their own dreams was always… challenging at the best of times and these were, most assuredly, not the best of times. They fell into step and, for a while, he lost himself to the rhythm of walking without a clear destination in mind allowing Lancia to fill in the blanks. To place them on the ship, to fill in details of the corridors that he hadn't been paying attention to when they'd come in.

He could feel Lancia behind him, trailing after him and it was… strangely comforting to have Lancia at his back. Or maybe it wasn't so strange as all that. After all, the first thing he'd learned to expect from Lancia had been kindness. And even now, when he knew better than to expect anything from Lancia but bitterness, he still made him feel something near to… safe.

Sometimes he wished he told him that, back then, when it might have meant something.

Back before...

Before.

Trying to steady his mind, to focus on what needed to be done, to be said was like drawing water from a dry well. He was running out of time, exhausting the last of his reserves and he just needed to… to….

What mattered was…

Something.

Lancia's voice summoned him from the warm haze of monotonous movement, "Since when do you need to get me out of the room to talk to me in private? You've never had a problem just barraging into my head in the past."

"Yes, well, this weekend has just been chalk full of firsts, hasn't it? What's one more?" He felt like laughing, but he didn't.

"I'm not gonna lie, you're kind of freaking me out here, kid. If you want to push me overboard I'm pretty sure you can do it just as well downstairs as up on the deck and I'd rather save my strength for the swim back to New York if that's the case."

Mukuro finally did chuckle. It hurt. Everything hurt. It was difficult to stay focused, to stay present, to say what needed to be said, even to remember what needed to be said. The moon overhead was so bright, like a searchlight. "I have to burn all my contacts, all my old marks as I have no way of knowing what they know and what they don't. All the old accounts and properties have to go as well. I'm having all the cash and new passports sent to a post box in Mumbai. A woman will meet you at the pier when we dock. She'll know you by sight so you just need to wait for her. She'll supply you with the key to the box and an apartment rental."

"Why are you telling me this?" He sounded so cautious, wary, worried. Strange man. He'd always been so… kind.

He'd never deserved that kindness.

"Seemed prudent to have a back up plan. Plus, you're supposed to be Mukuro Rokudou, remember? Shouldn't you know these kinds of details?"

Lancia grunted, annoyed, "You know we've got a month before we actually get there, right? Why the hell are we out here talking about this at 2am like it's a big fucking secret? What's really going on, kid?"

"I like to plan ahead, Mr. Lancia, you know that." Mukuro leaned his folded arms against the white ship railing, he stared out at the dark of an endless ocean. It wasn't a bad view to go out on, all things considered. "You've been good to us despite everything. You'll continue to keep them safe while I'm indisposed, won't you? I can trust you with that, I think, if nothing else."

"What did you do?"

He hated that he sounded so concerned. Stupid. It was enough that he cared about Ken and Chikusa, that he'd make sure they were safe. Anything else was… too much. Unnecessary.

He was so tired.

He shrugged, leaning forward and dropping his chin down against his folded arms, "What I had to, Mr. Lancia, what was necessary. I discovered my house was infested with vermin so I burned it to the ground and started again. It's the only way to be sure. I just… need to rest for a while now. That's all."

"Mukuro…"

And then Lancia was gone and he was alone as the storm rolled in, dark clouds covering the moon as the world turned black and cold and his own feverish dreams swallowed him down.

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 11?  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
Mar?h 9, 20?3

**MUKURO**

The world trembled and shook around him and he knew he needed to get up, to move, but he couldn't seem to remember why.

Couldn't even remember what he was doing on the floor in the first place.

He'd spent his life running in circles, protecting people who were safer without him and turning them into killers, making them what Esterneo wanted them to be even if that had never been his intention.

But then intentions didn't matter much. The road to Hell was paved with them.

Only results mattered.

He had run and run and he'd always ended up in the same place. He'd murdered thousands of people and Esterneo had thrived in the shadows he'd cast by drawing attention, had taken advantage of the voids he created. He wanted to destroy the mafia, but everything he'd done so far had merely opened the door to allow something far worse to slip in to take its place.

"And to think I wasted so much time and energy hiding from you, being frightened of you," that voice so very much like his own commented from somewhere above him, beyond him. "Pathetic."

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 130  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
February 17, 2003

**CHIKUSA**

Ken's voice was loud in the darkness, his breath warm against his ear. "You can't let him know, Kappa. You can't let him see what you see. It's dangerous. He's dangerous like this. You know that. Just keep quiet, don't interfere, just keep your fucking head down."

He nodded, brief and tight, his lips thin and pinched together against the urge to say… something, anything, because he knew Ken wasn't really there. That if he opened his eyes what he'd see might even look like Ken… but it wouldn't be him.

Fingers pressed against the puckered edges of his wounds in quick succession. They were all mostly sealed, well on their way to being healed well enough that he could leave this place, but they were all strangely numb around the edges just like the scars on his head, but more sensitive for being fresher and in more tender locations. His breath stuttered, but the pain wasn't bad. It was mostly only sore now. A little worse when he coughed, when he moved or struggled the few yards to the little bathroom Mukuro had told him he was well enough to use now.

"They're healing well," Mukuro commented, merely himself once more. "I should run some blood panels. I'll get someone in here and draw blood so we can send that out. It would be suspicious if I didn't. I should probably analyze your actual blood for infection, but I'm not sure how your blood would…"

Chikusa nodded, "I understand."

"Of course you do, sorry," Mukuro murmured, sounding distracted. "Hm. There was something I was supposed to do, wasn't there? There was something important…"

Sometimes Mukuro was okay.

There were minutes, hours at a time when he was focused, lucid, present. When he wasn't talking to himself or people who weren't there, when he wasn't accidentally projecting confusing illusions of things that had been or had never been across the walls and ceilings of the room. When he wasn't someone else entirely, speaking in soft foreign tongues or, worse, not speaking at all.

Mukuro had killed a prisoner that had come in with a toothache the other day for making some remark he hadn't quite been able to hear. Had slit him open with a scalpel from waist to chin before the man had a chance to do more than gargle a protest without even the faintest change in expression. Then spent the better part of an hour in the human realm dismantling the corpse, breaking bones, pulping the skull, twisting off bits and squashing intestines with his bare hands until he was able to fit all the bits that had once made up the man into a couple of trash bags. He'd whistled a soft, familiar tune as he carried the bags out and presumably disposed of them.

More than once he'd awoken to find Mukuro just standing in the middle of the room, silent, gaze distant and unfocused, paralyzed by something he couldn't guess at or begin to understand.

In the times between, he tried to make it better for him, tried to treat him as… gently as he was capable, but he'd never been good at reassuring anyone but Ken so he wasn't certain how effective it was. Lancia and Ken and even Mukuro had always been better at that sort of thing than he was. He often wondered if Mukuro was this bad around Ken or if the wheels only really came off once he was back in the quiet of the infirmary. Once he was here with the one person who couldn't find a way to help him.

"Chikusa?" Mukuro sounded exhausted and distant. He cracked his eyes open to look up at him, careful to keep his expression blank.

And this was the primary reason he couldn't often bear to open his eyes. He couldn't make himself _not_ see how _bad_ it was. How it was only getting worse each day, as his body broke down in lockstep with whatever was happening to his mind. Mukuro's hands trembled where they rested against the edge of the bed, dark hollows beneath his eyes and chapped lips indicative of the fact that he wasn't getting enough sleep or drinking enough water. He'd lost nearly two and a half kilograms since he'd first woken up and that alone made Chikusa's stomach roil like it was filled with snakes.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do.

Mukuro was usually the one who told them what needed to be done, he was the one who looked out for them, reasoned with them when they went too far, took care of them and when he wasn't able it had always been Lancia or Ken that had taken up the reins. He'd… he'd never had to make these decisions for himself and, based on the disastrous series of events that had landed him in the infirmary, he assumed that was probably for the best. Still… there was no one else here but him and Mukuro and Mukuro _needed_… something.

He just wasn't sure what.

"You'll die if you keep going like this," Chikusa murmured, immediately regretting the words the moment they were out of his mouth when Mukuro just stared at him, eyes wide with surprise.

Then Mukuro laughed, long and sudden and loud. Drowning out the beeps and hum of the machines that populated the infirmary.

"Never change, Chikusa," he murmured finally, collapsing into the chair at his bedside and leaning forward to rest his forehead against Chikusa's hand where it lay limp against the blanket. There was still a hint of amusement in his voice as he spoke, quiet and muffled and mostly to the blanket. "Hell wouldn't have me even if I did. Besides I made you both a promise though, didn't I? That we'd erase it all? I won't die before that's accomplished."

Chikusa opened his mouth to say something else. To tell him he didn't… that they didn't care about that. That they wanted him, not what he could do for them, but the words wouldn't come. They never did when he really wanted them, needed them. Not the right ones. So instead he laid his free hand against Mukuro's bent head. His hair felt limp and greasy beneath his fingers, but he held on anyway and wished he knew how to be more than what he was.

Eventually he closed his eyes again and slept.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 128  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
February 19, 2003

**M.M**

"So, what's in Japan?" She asked, rolling over onto her stomach and propping herself up with her pillow. Mukuro was sitting on the edge of Ken's bunk, as far from Ken as it seemed he could get while still being on the mattress. He'd seemed quieter the last few days when he bothered to show up which wasn't as frequently as he had before. Sometimes he came in muddy boots. Other times she'd wake up to find him passed out sitting up against the wall beside Ken's bed. It was weird, but tonight he'd come in early and spoken with Ken briefly before he'd fallen asleep. Hours later he was turned away from her, his cheek resting against a bent knee as he stared out into dark of the prison beyond their cell.

"Many things," was the answer she received, delivered in a soft, amused voice.

"You know I'm going to find out eventually, right?"

"Eventually isn't today."

"Fine. So, where are you going to stay? House? Apartment?"

"I bought an amusement park."

"Shut the heck up," she snorted, glancing up to find he'd turned his head so he could look at her, an eyebrow was raised in amusement and the ghost of a smirk lifted the corners of his lips. "_Seriously_?"

He inclined his head briefly, still smirking, before turning his head back towards the cell bars.

"Like a working amusement park? With like rides and things?"

"No, an old abandoned one, lots of weeds, coated in dust. As it happens it was as much a zoo or educational venue as it was an amusement center, so there are more buildings, less rides. It's old and filthy and positively crawling with squirrels. You'll _hate_ it."

She couldn't picture it. Even if her parents had approved, which they wouldn't have, she'd never had much time or patience for films and television. She knew what an amusement park was, certainly, but the idea of living in one, much less an _abandoned_ one seemed like the most strange and melodramatic thing she'd ever heard. The image she cobbled together in her head was mostly built from thoughts of haunted houses, dilapidated carousels, and a miniaturized post-apocalyptic version of the London Eye all set within a zoo that had been reclaimed by nature. "Why in the _world_ would you even _want _something like that? Why would anyone voluntarily choose to live in a place like that? You'll probably all get tetanus and die within the week or something."

"Hm, I don't know if I could explain it even if I were so inclined. And you'd better hop we don't or you'll have to find someone else to pay your bills when the trust I set up for you runs dry."

She rolled her eyes, "Well, whatever, I'm sure they'll probably love it, assuming Ken manages to be there for more than ten minutes without doing something stupid and killing himself. Boys are so damn weird."

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 347?  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
Dec?m?er 24, 1?93

**SALVATORE**

Someone was scratching at the wall.

He could hear them. At first, he'd thought maybe he was just imagining things. The noise had been soft, barely there, but tonight it was louder, much louder. It was there, just on the other side of the wall, a constant, inescapable, scrabbling clatter of sound. He clung to his blankets, careful to keep his knees tucked in, his bare feet well away from the edges of the bed, because sometimes… _sometimes_ it sounded like the scratching was _closer_. Like it was beneath his bed, carving lines into the shiny wooden floor beneath the rug, beneath the dust bunnies and discarded socks.

He whimpered, drawing his knees up tighter against his chest and straining his ears to hear. He wanted to scream, to call for his nanny, but he was afraid Papà would hear and be angry with him. He still had nightmares about the cold water, about the pond and the mud… other things too. She might get mad too, but if she was angry it only meant extra lessons. She didn't mind him being scared, but she hated whining. As long as he didn't whine, it might be fine.

Scritch, scatch.

Scritch, scratch.

"There's nothing there," he whispered, his voice sounding strange and too loud in the dark. "Stop being stupid."

There was a rattling, heaving breath that seemed to gust through the whole room before blowing warm across the back of his neck. He whimpered again, squeezing his eyes tight shut and pulling his blanket up over his head.

And for a moment, he thought that would be enough.

Then there was a gentle tug on the blanket.

Once.

Twice.

Scritch, scratch.

Tug.

Tug.

_There is something I need to remember._

"Give it to me," came the whisper, breath blowing warm across his cheeks.

He finally screamed, throwing the blanket aside and sitting up, pushing his back against the headboard and sobbing, knees yanked up his chest and breath coming in great, heaving gasps as he shivered and shook.

The door slammed open, the light sudden and glaring and white and terrible and he couldn't stop screaming because now he could _see it_. Crouched there at the foot of his bed, dark and hunched and swathed in bandages. Ragged, bloody fingers closed greedily over his discarded blanket, claws clicking like insects chirping as they ripped holes in the fabric. One eye stared at him- blood red and terrible- from the dark nothing of its face. It smiles at him, wide and impossible, with a mouth full of teeth like needles, rusty and blackened, as it drew back to strike and...

And then a flash of sudden pain snapped his head to the side, cheek stinging and burning as black spots washed over his vision. When they cleared the monster was gone and he was alone on his bed with an aching face, shivering and cold, his sheets and clothes, damp with sweat and violently unpleasant.

Miss Noemi stared down at him for a long moment, her dark eyes hard and cold. He swallowed a whimper knowing it would only make her angry, would only make her hit him again.

"Hm, a full nightmare manifestation," she commented finally, gesturing impatiently for him to get up. He stumbled quickly out of the bed and to his feet, still shivering, as she stripped the bed with quick efficient movements. Her dark hair swung in around her face as she pulled the sheets free and balled them up for the laundry chute, "You weren't able to sustain it when distracted, but your belief made it real enough that it might have been able to harm you if I hadn't been here to put a stop to it. Your father will be pleased to hear it."

"Really?" He whispered, feeling something warm burning in his chest. "He will?"

She nodded briskly, not quite looking back at him as he lingered there in his damp pajamas, "I'm sure. Go clean yourself up and change your clothes."

"Okay," he whispered, pulling fresh pajamas and underwear from the dresser before darting out to the bathroom to change.

He closed the door behind him and reached out to flick the switch on the wall, but nothing happened. He flicked it again and still the room remained stubbornly dark.

"Miss Noemi, the light bulb's dead," he commented, dropping his hand back to the doorknob and twisting.

Only it wouldn't twist like it was supposed to..

Panic curled in his chest as he jiggled the handle again, but it didn't budge.

The door was locked.

"Miss Noemi?" He asked, knocking on the door in case maybe she just couldn't hear him.

He could hear footsteps outside the room, the soft familiar click of Miss Noimi's heels against the wooden floor. They stopped in front of the door and he felt a surge of relief.

Then she spoke.

"It is a poor illusionist who can't release himself from a locked room," she commented, sounding bored.

His stomach sunk. The room was very dark.

There was a squealing noise as claws sliced across glass. He couldn't see it, but he knew, he knew. It was there with him and again those claws slid across the mirror's surface, a warning to get out. It was too loud, too close and it echoed off the walls of the little room.

He couldn't gather the concentration to make the key for the lock. Not while panic was clawing at his throat.

"Give it to me," the voice whispered again as claws drew a painful trail across his lower back.

And he did scream then, pounding his fists against the door as he lashed out, kicking backwards as he threw himself sobbing at the door. It didn't budge and he sobbed, lashing out again at the darkness, but he couldn't find it, couldn't sense it past the darkness and his own terror.

He needed a light.

A light.

He just needed to make a light.

Everything would be fine if he could just see what he was aiming at. He wouldn't be so afraid if he could just… if he could just… the little ladybug nightlight he'd had when he was five or six flickered to life on the other side of the room and he breathed a sigh of relief as he turned to look at it.

It cast pale gold and red light across the little room and the creature was right in front of him, right in front of him and almost big enough to blight out the light altogether. He screamed and slammed his aching, stinging, bleeding back against the door. It hurt, but the door didn't budge and there was nowhere to run. There was a flutter of wings and the screech of birds filled the little room as he cried for someone, anyone, to help him, the sleek black shadows tore at the creature's face, at its red, red eye, but the creature kept coming regardless and he was trapped against the door. Trapped and he couldn't think, couldn't speak, couldn't… claws racked across his shoulder, his chest, shredding his pajamas as blood and pain flowed free… and then there was nothing.

He woke up slowly, painfully to fingers stroking across a throat that felt raw and dry.

His father was seated in a chair beside his bed watching him with narrowed brown eyes. His dark hair was short, his suit was clean and dark and freshly pressed. Everything about Papà was neat, orderly. Even the scars that divided his face seemed planned. All the lines, be they diagonal or horizontal, were slim and faint a subtle addition that made his features distinctive, like a puzzle. Looking at him always made him feel small and messy. Papà drew his hand away as he struggled to sit up, to look presentable even though it was kind of a lost cause since he was covered with blood and his pajamas were torn and kind of gross. His shoulder and back throbbed and his vision was blurry with tears by the time he managed to pull himself back against the headboard. "That was a very poor showing, Salvatore," his father commented after a moment, cold and remote, his features a blur as Salvatore struggled not to blink.

"I… I'm sorry, Papà," he whispered, looking down at hands that were trembling where they gripped the blankets. He allowed himself to blink finally, letting the tears drip down his cheeks unseen.

"Control is everything, Salvatore. If you can't control yourself, you're useless to me. Now, I'm going to lock you in the bathroom and you're going to learn to control your fear and your power or this time you _will_ die in there. No one will come to save you. You must save yourself. Do you understand me?"

He opened his mouth to say that he didn't understand, that he didn't want to do this, that he was scared, that he felt sick, that his chest and his back hurt really, really bad where those claws had caught him and his pajamas were still sticky and damp with blood and sweat and he just wanted to go back to bed, that he didn't want…

That he didn't _want..._

…But what would be the _point_?

It wasn't about what he wanted. It was about the family. It was all for the good of the family. Saying stuff like that never worked, because it didn't _matter_. Complaining that he was hurt or tired never worked. Pleading only ended in punishment, in extra lessons, in pain.

He thought about the backpack beneath his bed, about the money he'd been stealing from Miss Noemi's purse and the wallets of all the people who came and went from the manor. He'd gotten really good at using his powers to lift wallets the last few months. Just stealing a bit here and a bit there so no one would notice.

He thought about leaving, about living another life far away from here. He could be anybody or nobody and it wouldn't matter if he weren't good enough because there wouldn't be anyone around who knew that but him.

But if he wanted any chance at that, he couldn't die here.

"Yes, Father… I understand," he lied, sliding up and out of the bed and limping to the bathroom to try again, his father's gaze heavy on his back.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 126  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
February 20, 2003

**M.M**

"Why do you do it?" He asked suddenly, breaking the peaceful silence that had settled between them.

"Why do I do what?"

"The hospital bills, the girl. Is it guilt? Honor? Obligation?"

M.M. sighed, shifting uncomfortably and turning her gaze down to the floor. "Do you need it in a one word or less?"

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

She chuckled, lying back on Ken's bed beside them. Sometimes she had to be this close just to hear him properly over Ken's snoring. He'd been in a weird mood all night, contemplative and quiet even when he was talking to Ken, and it worried her a little though she was loathe to admit it to herself, much less to him.

So, instead, of giving him the frivolous answer she might have on any other day, she gave his question serious consideration.

"Potential," she answered finally, her gaze trained on the bars of the bunk above them.

"Potential?"

"I'm not so generous as to keep pouring good money after bad for no reason and I'm not a nice enough person to feel that I owe her for something I didn't really have a hand in years after the fact. So, I suppose I do it for what we were and what we could have been and what we might be if she ever wakes up." It felt strange to talk about this, any of it. The staff at that first hospital and the private hospital after that had never asked her any questions and she'd never told them anything but lies. "I could have loved her. I might still. So… potential."

"It's a lot of money to invest in potential," Mukuro commented, fingers in Ken's hair, sprawled out carelessly with his head in his lap. He'd jerked awake briefly a few hours before, plagued by nightmares and fallen back to sleep like that. Mukuro had just sighed and allowed it.

She snorted, "Seriously, Mr. I-Spent-Every-Dime-I-Have-On-An-Abandoned-Theme-Park? You're going to lecture me about the price of potential? Everything we spend money on is an investment in potential. If I buy a hat or a new outfit or a car, I'm investing in the idea that those things are going to make me feel good, that they'll make me happy. Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but what I'm really buying is the idea that they might. This isn't really any different."

"So paying for your girlfriend's hospital bills is like buying a particularly expensive car?"

"Are you being purposefully obtuse or do you just legitimately not understand this kind of stuff?" She huffed, rolling over and propping herself up on her arms so she could glare at him properly. "Haven't you ever loved anyone, Mukuro Rokudou?"

"No," he replied easily and after three weeks of these strange late night chats she finally knew for certain what Mukuro looked like when he was lying. "I've never loved anyone. Not even myself."

She wondered idly if he had any idea how spectacularly bad at it he was.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 126  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
February 21, 2003

**FRAN**

He dreamed about a girl with hair so blue it looked like someone had drawn it in with marker. She lay sprawled on the floor of his room in green pajamas and her hair was so blue that it might have looked black in the dark… or maybe purple. But it was definitely blue. It was pretty, the way it spread out across the white floor of his room, curling and tangled and wet. When he touched it with his fingertips, it smeared red like blackberry jam.

"You know," a soft voice commented, rich and thick like sap running down tree trunks. It seemed to spread out across the white floor too, rolling in waves away from the body on the floor, lapping across the room to reach his ears, cool and deeper than he'd expected… if he'd expected anything at all. "It's bad manners to touch someone without permission."

That wasn't a girl voice.

"Cat got your tongue?" The girl who might be a boy on the floor inquired. Pale fingers with bruise dark nails tapped out a rhythm against the floor. It felt like a song he'd heard before, a long time ago in a dark, dark place.

Fran frowned and stuck out his tongue, examining it as best he could for signs of cats though he wasn't sure what exactly he should be looking for. He wasn't sure he liked cats. He'd seen them in shop windows and hiding behind garbage cans, but they never came close.

"You're weirdly literal for an illusionist," the probably boy complained, still looking away as if he didn't need to see him to see what he was doing. And maybe he didn't. He didn't need to see his face to know he was smiling, so maybe it was like that for him too.

"I don't. Have to see you, I mean," the almost (probably, definitely) a boy commented in answer to a question he'd never asked and Fran scuttled back away from him a little, surprised. The weird boy laughed like it was the best thing he'd ever not seen.

"I'm in your head. Space is relative here. So everything you see is just a visual representation of information parsed by your brain into terms more easily understood and in reality everything you see has no basis in fact just in your perception. It's why you saw my voice as waves of color and were able to smear my hair. I'm not here and I am, I'm turned away from you and right behind you. All of these things are true and none of them. Dreams are like illusions in that they are what you make of them. If you don't figure out at least that much bad men like me will surely take advantage of you, idiot."

"You're weird."

"You have no idea. I really have no business doing this sort of thing while I'm like this, but I needed to get out of my own head for a little while. I should mention that I destroyed the last two illusionists I ran across _so_… that's problematic. I don't even think I meant to, but… then again, maybe I did. They were such meek, weak little things, so easily frightened and I just can't deal with all that screaming just now. Your dreams… are very quiet. Why aren't you afraid of me?"

He liked the way he said that word. Quiet. He said it as if it meant something more than just that. As if it meant nice or comfortable or warm. He'd never thought of his dreams like that. They never usually felt like that. They were almost always cold, white, and lonely; like the isolation rooms at the hospital. This wasn't like that. It wasn't lonely with him there and it didn't feel so cold with those colors splashed across the floor.

"I don't usually like fairies," Fran commented finally, "but you make the room less empty and you don't smell like feet."

"Fairies, huh? Now who's the weird one here?" He scoffed. "I don't think we know each other well enough for sass."

Fran shrugged, "Your hair looks like blackberry jam."

"Your face is gonna look like blackberry jam if you keep it up." The fairy replied, his voice warm with laughter. Curling smears of orange splashing across the purple, red, blue and black that colored the floor between them. "Has your hair always been like that?"

"Maybe," Fran replied, letting his eyes slide to the side so he didn't have to look at him.

He didn't like talking about his own hair.

He didn't like what they said about his hair at the hospital, what that nurse said about his hair. The one with the funny accent who pinched him when he didn't want to wear the hospital gowns or stay in the tiny rooms they put him in. What she'd said about the fairies and how it meant that he had been left behind. How he was a changeling, a cuckoo's child, who could burrow into the hearts and souls of people. A parasite that would live off others, hollow them out and eat them up, bring them nothing but misfortune in return. How they'd come back to take him away with them some day and he'd have to go with them because he was never meant to be around _normal_ people. That he was dangerous and that's why they locked him away.

That was why he'd started running away, hiding away so they couldn't find him. He didn't want to be locked away anymore than he wanted to be taken away by people who'd just left him behind.

"That's stupid," the boy commented, frowning. "You don't have to go with anyone you don't want to."

A sudden flurry of movement caused Fran to look back at him. The boy had turned around and sat up and was now sitting cross-legged in front of him, pining his hair up so that it seemed to spread out like a palm frond behind his head. Had he said all the thinks he was thinking out loud? Or could this one really just hear everything he was thinking? Was this boy a fairy or just a liar?

"You look like a pineapple," he said aloud, unable to think of anything better to say while the other boy was staring at him like that.

His eyes were weird too.

He was definitely a fairy.

"And you look like a tube of toothpaste exploded on your head," the fairy boy replied, scowling. "You could change it if you wanted to, you know. Not that I care. Just… you could, if it bothered you."

A cool hand touched his head, brushing over his untidy hair, across his forehead.

It… wasn't a bad feeling.

"There," the boy smirked down at him. "It's a distraction and good practice."

"Practice?" Fran murmured, reaching up to touch the squashy thing perched on top of his head. Why was there a marshmallow up there? Had the fairy turned his head into marshmallow? Was it delicious? Could he eat it? Should he eat it? It was his hair after all so…

"Oh my god, shut _up_," the fairy commented, pressing his hand down against the floor which wasn't white at all anymore, instead it was shiny and glittered like a mirror and when he looked down he could see the squashy thing perched on top of his hair was some kind of hat, golden brown and topped with green fronds… like a pineapple. "And don't eat it. It's not food. It's not even real."

He knew that. He could tell it wasn't actually food, even if it looked tasty, but if it wasn't food was it like his shoes? Like the things he wished for? The things that weren't real, but could feel real if he thought about them really hard and imagined them really well?

He barely even noticed that his hair was still there and just as green as it had ever been. He poked the squish squashy hat with his fingertips as the boy rolled his eyes. "Really… ugh… your teacher _sucks_. You're an open book and you don't even know enough to be able to manage your appearance. That's just… _lame_. You should kill the one you have and get a new one because whoever's been teaching you is _garbage_. They either aren't very good or they want you to be criminally defenseless. It's _pathetic_. You should have walls, for one thing. Walls that you build up inside you that keep bad men like me out. It's the one thing illusionists can do that normal people can't. You can also use illusions like this," he jabbed a finger into the hat, "to mask your appearance. Big, obvious things like this will mask the more subtle things you do. So you can hide weapons or change your hair color or whatever and anyone who can sense illusions will think they're just sensing the big, obvious thing. Plus, if you have something super obvious on display all the time than they'll think you're either very good at what you do or very bad. So either it'll scare them off or lead them to underestimate you. Either way you're safer if they can't judge you properly at a glance. You might be talented, but all the talent in the world won't help you if you don't know how to use it properly. Find a teacher who can _actually_ teach you that and you'll at least have a fighting chance."

"Teacher?" Fran inquired, because he'd been watching Grandma's shows with her so he knew what that was, but he wasn't so sure what it had to do with him or where he would have gotten one.

"My, my, but you are just a babe lost in the woods, aren't you? Crushing your will wouldn't even be a challenge. How long have you been on your own?"

He didn't know that.

He didn't remember much before the hospital. He didn't even really like remembering the hospital, but I couldn't seem to forget it either.

"Probably on purpose," the fairy murmured, and his hands were cool where they brushed across the markings on his face. "It's easy to use what you are to forget what you were. We're as good at deceiving others as we are deceiving ourselves. But sometimes it's good to remember the things we hate so we don't ever have to experience them again."

"What do you hate?"

"People like me, mostly, but the mafia as well. They'd all love to get their hands on someone like you. Untrained, unrestrained power… they'd ruin you. They'd just burn you to cinders… or I would, one or the other."

"I don't think you could." He thinks about the woman with the dog. The sharp crack of the nurse's head against the stairs as he watched her tumble down, down, down.

"My, my, but you _are_ something special, aren't you? Don't press your luck, kid, my patience isn't exactly at an all time high today and I'd really rather not leave you in pieces. You're probably safest hiding out there in the mountains practicing on your own. That's how I learned. Stay away from people like us. Maybe I'll find you again someday at this grandma's place. I'll come huff and puff and blow your little house in."

"Corny," Fran murmured, because it was, but the way he'd said it had made something in his chest feel strange, squirmy.

"Yeah, because I care what someone who named himself after a country thinks of my jokes, _Fran_."

Fran wrinkled his nose, frowning, trying to remember if he'd mentioned that. It didn't seem like the sort of thing he'd say. He wasn't even sure if it was true or not.

The fairy boy laughed, "Truth is overrated. Remember about the wall. Build it high and tight and inspect it often for cracks."

Sometimes he dreamt about a warm, safe place.

Not often because it hurt and he didn't dwell on things that hurt him, but sometimes, just sometimes, he dreamed of a place where he belonged. A place where someone made him really good sandwiches with lots of mustard and no one asked him why his hair was green or where he'd come from; a place that was his, just his, a place where he could belong.

It wasn't ever a physical place, not really, nothing he could picture clearly during or after. It was always more like a feeling. A warm, safe feeling that filled his belly and wrapped all around him like a blanket.

The pineapple fairy's laughter felt like that.

It was nice.

If he wasn't careful, he might miss it when it was gone.

"Okay, you should go now, shoo," he murmured, waving his hands at the fairy. "Go, shoo, shoo."

He brought his knees up to his chest and did what he'd suggested and built a wall all around himself, smooth and flat and cold. "Shoo, fly, don't bother me."

The dream shattered around them and he woke up on the couch, sniffling in the dry heat of that Grandma's house, a musty afghan pulled around his head, leaving his feet bare to the open air.

Grandma's couch smelt of old cheese and feet. It was lumpy and bumpy and no amount of wishing to fairies could make it comfortable. She didn't always call him by the right name and sometimes when he wasn't thinking about it she forgot who he was and why he was there, but even then she didn't try to kick him out into the cold. She said it was because she was forgetful and he was a good helper and much more helpful than her actual grandchildren. Still, he had to be careful if he wanted to stay. He didn't like the snow or the cold.

It had been cold and snowy when he'd left the hospital the first time. It had hurt his feet, made them red and purple and blistery until he'd been kind of glad when someone saw him walking and picked him up and took him back.

It was better, being inside. He could watch the snow fall from the Grandma's warm rooms while he sipped warm water with lemon and honey. The poodle was grouchy and old and half-blind and it grumbled at him pretty much all the time. Sometimes it tried to bite his toes, but since it couldn't see so well it had never actually managed it. The ferret, which had turned out to be nothing like a dog, was much better. It was fuzzy and curious and didn't seem to mind him at all. Sometimes it slept curled around his neck or burrowed in to nuzzle his bare toes.

He liked the ferret.

It wasn't the best or nicest place he'd been, but he had a blanket and the ferret and sometimes there was a fire and there was always something to eat- even if it wasn't very good- and that was much more than he usually had so he thought it was probably worth sticking around at least until the weather turned warm again and the snow went away.

For now though it was early and he could hear her stirring in the back room, getting up and bumping about. Could hear the poodle growling and Grandma telling him to 'stop that, you silly old thing'. She'd be out soon so there was no point in going back to sleep now as she'd want to go for a walk and then there would be breakfast. She liked ham and eggs and so did he.

It was snowing again and he sat on the couch with the afghan draped over his shoulders yawning. Eventually he imagined a hat for himself. A nice, red apple that fit well, snug and secure over his ears, that was super squashy like the pineapple had been and might make a nice pillow even while it hid some of his untidy green hair. He laid back and smiled a little because it did make a nice pillow and, best of all,it smelled like an apple too.

He wondered if he went back to sleep whether he'd dream of the pineapple fairy again.

He didn't think he would.

That corny fairy would probably forget all about him.

So maybe he'd forget him too.

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: ?  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE  
?

**MUKURO**

"Hey kid," Lancia's voice was quiet and rough with sleep as he settled back against the cell door. It shuddered against his back, the metal as cold and unforgiving as ever.

He frowned harder, staring down at his dirt-covered hands and wondering again why he kept coming back here. Again and again, stolen minutes in the morning after he left Ken and before he returned to Chikusa and in the middle of the night after he left Chikusa and the infirmary behind. Sometimes, like tonight, it was after he'd buried another guard or nurse or prisoner and he'd come here before he went to shower.

When he got lost in a memory of a training session where he had to create illusion after illusion until his nose bled, until he passed out. When it was memories of those rooms, of all those needles and bullets and tests. When it was memories like those… he didn't mind being with Ken or Chikusa after. But when the memories were about them….

Sometimes he came here.

It was stupid.

It wasn't as if he wanted anything from him.

He didn't even talk to him most of the time.

Didn't want to.

But Lancia talked to him.

Lancia _always_ talked to him, even when he didn't talk back, and he never understood _why_.

The last time they'd spoken, really spoken, he'd made sure Lancia would be stuck down in solitary for months. And still he…

He told him stories. Stories he'd told him before, dozens of times, when he'd been small and pretending at a life that had never been his to keep, pretending he wasn't listening even while he hung on every word.

They weren't nice stories.

Lancia didn't tell nice stories or happy stories, just true stories. True stories spoken in a wry tone as if the things he told him about were funny even when they weren't really.

"When I was little, I was always getting into scrapes, fighting with other kids in the neighborhood, lifting candy from the shops, dumb shit like that. I was always getting into one type of trouble or another and my brother was always the one who got me back out of the shit again and again. He was a couple years older than me and he'd box my ears whenever I did something stupd then he'd return the things I stole or apologize to the parents of the kids I smacked around. He was always cleaning up my messes so our Pops never heard about any of it.

"He worked in the big coal mine on Sardinia, our Pops, so we wouldn't see much of him. He'd be gone for weeks at a time then he'd show back up with a pile of filthy laundry, a bottle of whiskey and some girl he'd picked up somewhere. I never knew my Mom. She died or left when I was little. Didn't much matter which. All that mattered was that she wasn't around. My brother was the one who looked after me and so he was what I cared about. Hell, he was all I cared about. I don't remember if I ever even thought too much about my Pops at all back then. He was mostly just some guy with bleary eyes and a red face who came and went and left money for bills and food. Not always enough, but usually my brother could stretch it, make it work. He'd pick up odd jobs in town and be out late sometimes, but he'd usually bring me home little treats whenever he was. Ratty books or bottle caps or broken toys he'd fix up for me. Shit like that. And I never thought much about it. Funny, looking back, to think that I grew up sheltered from the shitty reality of the world, but I did. Even while we were chipping the mold off the bread we were eating or picking up bruised fruit that had been tossed out by the restaurants in town, I had no idea that other folks didn't live like that, that that wasn't just how life was.

"For a while at least, he never let reality touch me, never let it sink in so I kept running around town being a jackass and he kept me from getting into too much trouble and that's how things were then. I knew Dad wasn't ever around, that that was kind of weird, but I never minded that. When he wasn't there things were nicer, better. When he was around things were loud and Andrea always sent me to bed early or made up bullshit errands to get me out of the house. When he wasn't there we'd stay up late playing cards, listening to this old radio that Pops kept out in the garage, but when Pops was home… none of that happened. And Andrea would always act really weird. Edgy, jumping at shadows and I didn't figure out why until he was gone. I just… didn't get it.

"Then one cold day in January he sent me out to get milk and when I came home he was gone. There was just this fucking note on the table. Just one word and I couldn't even read it. I had to take it to one of the neighbors to find out it just said 'sorry'. Just that: sorry.

"I thought it was just a joke at first, even though he'd never been the sort to joke around. That he'd just show up that night, come in with dinner like nothing had happened and that would be that. But he didn't. He'd taken all the money with him that Dad had left, but he'd bought some bread the day before and I had the milk he'd sent me to get so I drank some of that and ate a slice of bread and told myself he'd be back in the morning.

"He wasn't.

"A week went by and then another. I'd eaten the rest of the bread, drank all the milk and started stealing food from the markets, but people caught on pretty fast to that and it became harder to get away with it. No one seemed to be willing to turn me in, but they didn't let me in the stores anymore either. Don't really blame them for that, didn't then either, Andrea had always made this habit of telling me that everybody has their own problems and I'd begun to believe that well before he'd disappeared from my life.

"So, when my Pops finally showed back up a month later it was to a stack of late notices and a cold house because the electricity had been shut off the previous week. He was so fucking pissed. And then I got to find out why my brother left. What he'd run away from. Or what I assumed was probably part of the reason anyway. I don't remember all that much after the first good punch. I just remember waking up the next morning with bruises and cuts and a broken wrist and everything hurt.

"As it turned out, he was a mean fucking drunk, my father.

"I left a couple years later. Took the money my father left to cover the rent one month and bought a bus ticket to Lucca."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Lancia snorted, "Who said I was telling you? I'm just talking. Not my fault you're listening in."

He'd said the same thing then too.

Sometimes he couldn't tell if he was living these moments or just remembering them.

Maybe Lancia was sleeping and he was only talking to himself.

He didn't have the courage to find out for certain.

They sat in silence for what seemed like a long time and when Mukuro finally spoke again, the words seemed to tumble out of his mouth of their own volition. "Do you hate him?"

"My brother? Nah. I did, you know, for a long time. Semi-monthly beatings and the occasional busted limb do a pretty good fucking job of instilling a healthy sense of resentment. For a while, I kept thinking he'd come back for me. That he'd just show up in a car one day. Something nice, flashy maybe, and he'd knock on the door and tell me to pack my shit. That he'd tell me that he never meant to leave me alone for so long. That he'd thought Dad would stop if his favorite whipping boy weren't around any longer. Something. Anything. I'd have taken any damn excuse he offered and been glad of it. I'd have eaten that bullshit with a smile and kept on grinning as I swallowed it down.

"But he never did.

"And for a while I hated him for that; for leaving, for not coming back, for all of it really. I thought he was a coward and a liar and a jerk and a hundred other things when, really, all he was in the end was a scared kid. He'd been your age, maybe a little younger, and he'd been scared. And maybe he'd done all he could for me, for as long as he could, until he just couldn't stand it anymore. Sometimes I wonder about him. Wonder if he's out there somewhere living a happy life. If he has kids of his own, if he worries about whether he'll drink too much and end up hurting them. If he still feels like he's running away. If he's lived his whole life feeling like he's been running away from the place he began, from me, from himself. I hated him for a long time. Too long maybe. And now... now, I hope he doesn't even think about it. I hope everything is fine with him. That he doesn't even remember what he left behind. That he's happy."

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't," Lancia chuckled, knocking gently against the door. "Scared kids do dumbass shit and they don't deserve to spend all their lives paying for it. I don't blame him for wanting to save himself, wanting to survive."

"He could have taken you with him."

"Eh, maybe, but I don't blame him for it anymore. Besides it all worked out in the end."

They both knew that was a lie.

He should go.

And yet…

"Some people don't deserve to be forgiven, Mr. Lancia."

"Yeah, that's true," Lancia commented. "But I think the only person who gets to decide that is the person who has to do the forgiving."

"Is that so?"

"That's the way I look at it anyway."

**-ooo-**  
**THEN**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: ?375  
THE GANG  
NORTHERN ITALY  
De?emb?r 25, ?996

**MUKURO**

The snoring really was just _ridiculously_ loud. He wasn't sure how Chikusa managed to make sleeping with Ken look so effortless when he was making that noise directly into his ear. He assumed at some point he would adjust to it as well and it would become just so much background noise or maybe even something comforting and familiar.

_There was something he was supposed to do_ _…_

_Something he needed to remember_ _…_

_Something_ _…_

Ken snorted, loudly and rolled over grumbling and the sound startled him from his thoughts and for a brief moment he wondered if Ken had woken up and then the snoring started again in earnest.

Still, it wasn't really the snoring that had kept him awake and restless long after Ken and Chikusa had fallen asleep tucked together and buried deep under a pile of musty blankets in the cabin's single tiny bedroom. He'd been sitting in a chair near the door for hours, turning the evening's events over and over in his mind and it was well after midnight by the time he finally gave up on sleep altogether and slipped from the room, shutting the door silently behind him.

The cabin would have been warm enough even without the blankets as there were little radiators in both rooms and they'd cranked them all the way up until it was sweltering inside, but not even Ken had seemed to mind the heat after all the time they'd spent camping outside lately. Weeks crammed in a little pup tent with a couple sleeping bags and never enough food to not still be hungry because they couldn't ever know for sure when they'd next fine a house or a town where they could pick up some more so they always had to ration what they had. They couldn't risk being seen in towns or on the roads while the remnants of the Granchio Famiglia were still looking for them so they'd kept to the forests far away from people for the most part just ducking into town long enough to keep the Granchio on their trail.

The Granchio were proud, vindictive bastards which would keep them from involving any other Famiglia or, worse yet, the Vindice in their problems as long they were able to cling to the illusion that they might be able to catch up to them if they just moved a little faster, looked a little harder. So far the plan had worked reasonably well, but they had yet to get those bastards to follow them into the woods. Instead, they paced and whined like hounds losing a scent at the edges, beneath the watchful eyes of the wolves he'd summoned to keep an eye out for them. They all stayed together, watched each other's backs, killed anyone who approached them so he hadn't been able to mark them or get anyone in place to eliminate them, but at long as they kept following after them there would always be another chance. If he could just draw them in, get beneath their guard and mark one then he could have that one wipe them out all out and once they were gone the three of them would be invisible again, safe again. He just needed to do it right this time.

He just needed to be patient, to wait until the moment was right, to keep Chikusa and Ken out of it. If he'd just done that in the first place none of this would have happened.

But they'd wanted to help, had insisted on it and he had...

What was it he had wanted?

Not to be alone? Not to be the only one with blood on his hands? Had he just wanted to bond them to him all the more tightly, steal their options so he could keep them? If they were known they'd have no choice but to run, to stay, to let him protect them. It made him feel sick because he wasn't... he wasn't sure. Wasn't sure if it had been just bad luck that had gotten them caught or if he had... caused it. If he had...

He still remembered the terror of the gunshot, of Ken shoving him to the floor. There'd been so much blood and before he'd even thought to react, before he'd even been able to do more than turn his head, Chikusa had sent the woman's letter opener spinning across the room to lodge in her throat, his expression as cold and remote as an iceberg floating on a foreign sea. He'd just lain there covered in Ken's blood, pinned beneath his too heavy body as the blond groaned and whined about taking a bullet in the ass.

He needed to be better.

He wasn't enough like this. He couldn't protect them like this. He couldn't do what needed to be done like this. His illusions were strong enough, but his focus was terrible, he couldn't maintain them for more than a few minutes at a time. He only knew how to use two realms and it hurt like hell whenever he switched between them so he was defenseless while he transitioned. He could manage the possession thing easily enough if he were able to sit somewhere safe and concentrate, but he couldn't do it on the fly and his concentration broke so easily that he really had to be completely alone for it to work. He wasn't sure how he'd even managed what he had at Esterneo. There it had seemed… effortless, like the easiest thing in the world. Maybe it was because he hadn't been trying to do anything more complicated than wholesale destruction. Maybe it was just easier when he wasn't specific, when he didn't try to make things so particular.

Or maybe he was only that good because of the bullets.

He couldn't stop thinking about them, buried at the bottom of his backpack. They were supposed to make him better, make him more than what he was. If he used those… maybe it wouldn't be so hard. Maybe he'd be able to just possess someone at the little motel those Granchio idiots were staying at, lock them in their room and light the whole thing on fire and listen to them scream as it burned. Maybe it could just be that simple. There hadn't been a lot of paperwork explaining the bullets, but there had been enough. Enough that he knew even ordinary people could use them to make people… do things. That he was supposed to be able to do more, to do more without anyone even realizing he was there, that the ideas belonged to anyone but themselves.

It sounded too good to be true, too easy. People weren't easy. If he'd learned nothing in the last six months of life, he'd learned that. Chikusa was quick and accurate, but the only time he acted without hesitation was when they were in danger or had been hurt. Outside of life and death moments, he was awkward and indecisive, he argued with Ken constantly, but only over inconsequential things. With bigger things he was utterly content to follow their lead, to let them make the decisions for him and he never asked questions. Ken, on the other hand, had nothing BUT opinions and questions and weird little stories about cats and bathmats and things he'd seen on television. In a fight he was a wrecking ball, especially with the cartridges in play, but he was also reckless and impulsive, he acted on instinct and sometimes forgot orders in favor of whatever his instincts were telling him to do. The longer he spent with a cartridge in, the more he took on the instincts of this or that animal and the more difficult it was to reason with him much less get him to listen to orders.

Moving on the Granchio Famiglia so early had been a mistake, letting them come had been a mistake, it had all been... a mistake.

But he hadn't been thinking about whether they were ready, whether _he_ was ready, only about keeping Esterneo's one remaining ally from discovering what had happened there, from drawing the attention of the Vindice or being able to identify them. He'd read enough in the documentation he'd burned to know that the head of the Famiglia, Giulia Romano, and several of the other ranking members of their Famiglia had been in to view the experiments. Had assisted with some of the research. Would probably be able to recognize them on sight or at least be able to pick them out of a crowd. So he'd wanted to kill them, kill them and then search the house for any documentation that might lead back to them, that might expose who or what they were.

Then, of course, he'd found out first hand how much he still had to learn about possession, about how he used illusions, and he'd been so angry, so frustrated by his inability to do what needed to be done that he'd let Ken talk him into breaking in. It had been stupid, he'd known it was a stupid plan, but he hadn't had any better ideas and if they could just take care of this last loose end, this one potential hazard than they could take their time learning how to use what they were. This couldn't wait. After all the Vindice might discover what they had done at any time and while they hadn't sworn any vows that would allow the Vindice to track them easily, the less info there was about them the more likely they were to get away with it.

"Let's just break in," Ken had suggested, bouncing up and down on his toes as he gestured down at the big house. "I mean, I can pick a lock and then we just kill anyone who gets in our way, right?"

"You're an idiot. That's a terrible plan," he had snapped, glaring down at the house as if he'd be able to connect with his mark again if he just stared hard enough.

But, of course, in the end, that's exactly what they'd done. And it had been a terrible plan and they'd all been idiots who got caught and Ken had gotten shot and then they'd had to kill everybody in the whole stupid house before they'd had the time to go through her office. It had only made him feel a little bit better that he'd at least been right about her having paperwork about him, about them.

They'd been on their way out when those others had shown up. He'd managed to switch to the beast realm and call enough wolves and snakes to hold them while they escaped, but they'd been seen and so they'd been running ever since.

They'd been lucky to stumble upon the cabin while they'd been looking for a place to set up camp and wait out the storm that had been rolling in. It was a nice change of pace to be staring out a window watching as a storm blanketed the area with a foot of snow rather than stuck out in it, clinging together miserably as they hoped to make it through another night without freezing to death. The snow had all but stopped now, but the clouds were still grey and heavy even in the dark of the night and he didn't need a weather forecast to tell him that more snow was inevitable.

For now though, their toes weren't numb any longer and the cabin was uncomfortably warm and there was a whole pantry of dried and canned things for them to work their way through. They wouldn't be able to stay here long. There was no telling who the owners of the cabin were or when they'd be back. Plus, he got edgy whenever they stayed in one place too long.

He often wondered whether that constant urge to run, to move, to flee from one place to another was survival instinct or merely the fear of what might happen if he had too much time to sit and think. Either way, it always left him feeling strange and unsettled until they moved on. He half expected them to get fed up at some point, to demand to be left behind or complain or that maybe he would simply wake up one morning and find them gone, but none of that ever happened. Instead they trudged through snow and sleet and rain, following the path he set for them without so much as whisper of dissent. He didn't pretend to understand it, but he was… glad for it all the same. Some days he was quite certain he'd have been completely lost without the quiet reassurance of Chikusa's presence or Ken's constant jabbering.

They'd left their packs strewn haphazardly across the living room floor and he had to step over and around them to where he'd left his own pack on the far side of the room near the fireplace. Their damp clothes, freshly cleaned in the cabin's little washing machine, had been tossed over chairs and tables to dry before they'd changed into the only dry, clean things they had left. Ken had complained about the whole place smelling like detergent, but he'd been as excited about the possibility of clean clothes as he and Chikusa had. Fortunately the roads would probably still be knee-deep in snow for a few days at least so they had some time before they probably had to worry about anyone showing up to lay claim to the cabin.

He found what he was looking for at the bottom of his bag in a cigar box he'd appropriated from that Giulia Romano's office. Adding in a couple pairs of mismatched socks had kept the bullets and pistol snug and safe inside and the box itself had kept it all dry even with all the snow they'd been traipsing through lately. He didn't enjoy the winter. Didn't enjoy the snow either. His nightmares had been more frequent lately and stranger. Wandering around lost in a forest in the dead of winter. It always seemed strangely on point except for the fact that he was so much smaller than he was now in his dreams and he was always utterly alone.

The nights were long and he hadn't been sleeping much lately… not that he ever did really. But this latest sojourn into the wildness had been longer than usual and the days of trudging through the snow coupled with the nightmares and the usual insomnia had left him too scattered to focus well enough for a proper possession. He had enough marks, but without focus he couldn't access them. The best he'd been able to do was to use the beast realm to keep those wolves on task looking out after those Granchio idiots and even that was exhausting. He hadn't been able to actually kill anyone in weeks and that shouldn't have bothered him, but it _did_. It was like an itch beneath his skin, a tightness and tension that he couldn't shake. It felt a little like he was going mad. Or that he'd been mad all along.

Either way it made him feel dangerous, reckless enough to try it. He'd been thinking about it for weeks or maybe he'd been thinking about it since he'd found them and he just hadn't realized. It was hard to say, but this relaxed atmosphere made him long for the simplicity of violence. He understood violence, understood pain and rage and hate and so did they, but they also… liked this. This easy domesticity, this constant companionship was more than enough for them. He'd discovered in the months since they'd escaped Esterneo that for all the things he understood about his companions, there were so many more things about them that made no sense to him at all. Things that made him his head and his chest _ache_ until he wanted… _needed_ to lash out. To make it stop. To make them stop, because it was too much.

And that was the real problem.

That was why he couldn't sleep, why he couldn't….

Why he was thinking about the gun again, about the bullets.

Ken had given them things today.

Things he'd stolen from somewhere, no doubt, since they didn't really have any money left and hadn't for a long time. But they were things he'd gotten from somewhere and stowed away in his pack and kept. He'd kept them and given them to them earlier in the evening with this shy, puffed up bad humor that would have made him laugh if it weren't so… if it weren't so _stupid_.

"If I weren't so stupid," he muttered glaring down at the gun cradled in his hands.

It was just a scarf.

Just a stupid scarf.

He wasn't even certain why it bothered him so much.

It was cold outside. The middle of winter and he felt half-frozen all the time, his body numb and awful around him. The cold didn't have much to do with it, but the cold made it worse, made him more aware of it. And he hated it. He hated the cold, he hated this body that felt so strange and foreign and numb. He supposed, perhaps, that he complained about the cold frequently enough that he was the one who'd gotten the idea stuck in Ken's head.

He hadn't been able to do anything but stare at it when Ken had thrust it into his hands after their makeshift dinner (there had been noodles and jarred sauce and canned mushrooms in the cabinet and Chikusa had glared his way through cobbling together some sort of mystery pasta chili abomination which had tasted far better than I looked). One minute he'd been shoveling that slop into his mouth and the next Ken had taken his bowl away and shoved the red monstrosity at him.

He'd looked down at his hands, his fingers trembling a little beneath the cover of all that fabric. The scarf was enormous and it flowed out of his hands and draped across the floor and in the center of it was a slightly misshapen bar of chocolate. The chocolate was… okay. He could deal with the chocolate. He liked chocolate. He could eat it and then it would be gone. That would be the end of it. Sweetness on his tongue and then gone. Easy.

The scarf… the scarf was a _problem_.

The scarf was clearly a gift.

_A gift._

It set a dangerous precedent.

He wasn't… he didn't…

"Why?" He'd asked and it had sounded hoarse and foreign, his word in a stranger's voice.

"It's cold," Ken answered simply, shrugging, playing it off. He looked nervous and he shifted from foot to foot like he had to pee, his knuckles cracking and popping as the fingers of one hand clenched and unclenched around the edge of his too-large sweater before he turned on his heel and practically ran into the kitchen with the empty bowls he held in the other. The crash as he set them in the sink seemed loud in the quiet of the cabin. When he came back in a minute later, he wasn't really looking at either of them, but he wasn't sitting down either.

Mukuro chanced a glance at Chikusa and found him equally baffled by his own gift of a slightly less hideous hat (this one was violently purple, but it would blend in better with Chikusa's hair at least than the orange horror show he'd been wearing for the past few months) and a pair of gloves that looked to be only a little bit too big (much better than Chikusa's usual gloves which were clearly made for a man with enormous platter-like hands).

"It's just… it's cold, that's all," Ken mumbled, still fidgeting. "It's not a big deal."

It absolutely _was_ a big deal.

It coiled in his hands and across his lap and onto the floor like a great yarn snake. It was red, a deep, vibrant rusty red, soft and wooly.

It would be warm.

He closed his eyes, tight, trying valiantly not to throw up his dinner all over the stupid thing.

He wanted to toss it into the fireplace. Make it extra warm until it burned to cinders and then he'd never have to look at it again, think about it again. He'd never have to dwell on what it _meant_.

When he opened his eyes again, Ken still wasn't looking at him, wasn't looking at either of them.

He seemed almost ashamed and Mukuro's fingers trembled against the woven fabric.

What were they to him?

Why had he taken them along with him?

Why had he stayed with them all this time.

He should have left them behind a dozen times. Just walked off and left them but he...

_Why?_

"You're a sap," Chikusa commented, breaking the tension and tossing his old hat at Ken's face.

Ken yelped, surprised when the cap hit him. He grimaced, snagging and gripping the old hat tightly, twisting it back and forth between nervous fingers. "Am not. This hat was just beginning to smell funny, that's all."

"You always smell funny," Chikusa replied, tugging the new hat down over his hair.

It looked ridiculous. It had _earflaps_.

"Shut up, I smell fine."

"You really don't," Mukuro commented, forcing the words out in that stranger's voice.

Ken looked at him nervously, just out of the corner of his eye, barely a glance.

He closed his eyes again and wished he were better at this. Wished he knew what the right thing to say was, the right thing to do. His fingers clutched painfully hard around the fabric before he blew out a breath and opened his eyes once more, releasing the scarf to lay crinkled but whole across his lap.

"I suppose we'll just have to make sure the next place has a bathtub," he continued, because he knew that showers were an issue for Ken. He'd only noticed because it was a practical matter. People who didn't bathe regularly stood out more. That was all.

That was all there was to it.

Ken smiled brilliantly, "Really?"

"Yes," he replied, his tone measured and even, his fingers curling around the soft fabric again, gentler this time. "I'm sure it won't be so difficult to find a place like that."

He didn't burn the scarf, but every time he looked at it for the rest of the night, he felt that itch beneath his skin worsen. That urge to destroy that scarf and the fragile peace they'd built between them. He needed to work. He needed to hurt people. He had a purpose to fulfill and he wanted, needed to remind himself of that. This wasn't what he was meant for, these soft moments, these quiet times. The need to be what he was meant to be beat within him in time with his heart, a rhythm that grew more frantic as the evening stretched on until Chikusa had been half-asleep in the armchair and they'd poked and prodded him awake so they could all turn in. The fire had been down to embers and Mukuro had tucked the scarf away near the door.

Still the need had lingered, a caged bird in his chest, frantic wings slapping against him and as he knelt in the silent living room with that gun cradled in his hands it felt like coming home.

This was what he wanted, what he needed.

To work, to focus, to hunt and hurt their enemies, this would… this would let him do that… probably… it was…

"What are you doing?" Ken murmured and Mukuro startled, fumbling and dropping the gun, a little surprised and immensely relieved when it didn't go off.

"Do I have to get you a bell?" He snarled, retrieving the fallen weapon, anger flaring as surprise faded. He turned away from the dying fire to glare at Ken where he hovered near the kitchen. He had a glass of water in his hand that he held out like a shield, like an excuse.

_I just got up to get a drink,_ he doesn't say. _I wasn__'__t worried or spying on you because you__'__ve been acting like a giant awkward freak all night._

Right.

_I was just thirsty, _the cup lied.

Right.

"You could, but I wouldn't wear it," Ken replied easily, fidgeting, nervous. He took a hesitant step closer and then another and another. "Mukuro, um, hey, so, where did you even get a gun and what are you doing with it?"

"Esterneo," Mukuro answered simply, turning his gaze back down to the weapon. There wasn't much point in lying. He plucked one of bullets from the box he'd laid out on the floor and held it up for Ken to see. Maybe this was good. Maybe this was the best thing. "These are the special bullets they were trying to increase my compatibility with. The ones that made Esterneo outcast even within the festering hell that is the mafia."

"Doesn't look like much," Ken commented, plopping down to sit cross-legged in front of him. He squinted at the bullet, sniffing, obviously reluctant to touch it or get too close to it. "Smells funny."

"Does it?"

"Yeah. Kinda like ozone, I guess? I don't know, it's weird," he shrugged. "You sure you wanna be messing around with that stuff?"

"No," Mukuro answered easily, flipping open the cylinder and shaking the regular bullets out to ping and tumble across the floor before slipping the special bullet inside.

"But you're gonna try it anyway?"

He looked nervous.

He probably should be.

"That was the plan. I can't make use of it if I don't know what it does, what the limitations and advantages of doing using it are. I assume it must allow for more specific or expanded control than what I'm capable of on my own, but…"

"You use a lot of big words, you know? It makes it kinda tough to know what you're saying sometimes." Ken frowned, his mouth screwing up in thought. "Okay, so... uh… who are you going to try to jump into? I mean, that's what it does, right? How it works?"

"Tell me when you can't figure something out and I'll explain," he offered, immediately feeling like he should kick himself for it when Ken beamed at him. He scowled and turned his attention back to the gun, "according to the doc-the papers I read on it, yes, that's how it should work. The Castoro Famiglia is closest to us, geographically speaking… ah, that means in terms of distance. I'm not sure if that matters, but since I've marked three people in that Famiglia, I thought it would be reasonable to start there."

"Thanks. Who are those guys again?"

"They specialize in information. They gather intelligence on various Famiglia and sell that information to the highest bidder. They aren't a strong family, by any stretch of the imagination, but they have several excellent infiltration experts- hm, spies- and that makes them both highly respected and quite dangerous."

"Okay. So, you're gonna use it in the morning or something?" Ken asked, nervous again, knees bouncing a little his fingers tip-tapping against them.

"Why wait? There's really no time like the present," Mukuro replied, raising the gun to his temple before he could lose his nerve. It felt like he'd felt the press of a muzzle in that spot a dozen times before. It was so terribly familiar. He pulled the trigger as Ken stared at him with wide eyes.

**-ooo-**

He awoke in a darkened bedroom, his wife turned over beside him mumbling discontentedly, momentarily unsettled as if she had unconsciously sensed the change in her husband.

He'd hated her for years.

He'd married her for her money, her family's influnce, but those wells had run dry long ago. He'd been young, young and ambitious, and it had seemed worth it, well worth the sacrifice to be rich, to be powerful. He'd given up so much for this life, for his family, and in the end, what did he really have to show for it?

A dull woman he could barely tolerate and ungrateful children who he was certain laughed at him behind his back.

He had a life lived and in the end there was only the family, no better and no worse than when he taken it over from his father for all the effort and time and care he'd invested in it. He'd thought they'd be great by now that they'd have surpassed the other families in the area at the very least but... no.

No, in the end, they were still small fish in an ocean surrounded by sharks and whales that could easily swallow them whole. Nothing had changed at all. He'd sacrificed a hundred different chances at happiness for nothing.

Nothing.

He could have been anything, anything or anyone at all, but instead he had been born to be the boss. And he'd never had a choice, a chance. This was how it worked after all. If you were the heir... that was what you were. That was all you could ever be.

Was this what he wanted for his children, his grandchildren? Wasn't it better to end it here? To put an end to this family and escape, escape as he had longed to do when he was young and wild before he'd allowed greed and ambition and that lust for power to consume? Before he'd submitted willingly to his fate? Hadn't he once longed to live a life of anonymity? A life far from the mafia and all that it stood for?

Maybe he'd find him again. That boy he had loved then. What was his name? He hadn't thought of him in years, but he thought of him now. Thought of his smile, the way he'd felt curled around him, the way he'd laughed and always smelled like smoke and tasted like peppermint. The way his dark hair had looked against the pillows of his childhood bed,but his his face was a pale blur in his memory.

What was his name?

Why couldn't he remember his name?

Did it matter?

No. He was just a boy he used to know.

No. What mattered was that he could be free, he could be... anything, anyone. That was what mattered, that and nothing else. All he needed to do was cut the ties that bound him to this life, to this fate.

He smirked up into the moonlit darkness of the room. There was a pistol in the bedside table, kept there and loaded at all times, a security measure, silencer already attached. He rolled over, slid the drawer open, pulled out the pistol, turned and shot his sleeping wife in the head with a quiet ping of sound.

It was the simplest thing in the world.

She died instantly and he felt nothing.

He laughed then and the laughter felt strange, relieved.

He could almost see it. The life he longed for waiting for him just beyond sunrise.

He could see the gun dangling loose and warm in his hand, but he couldn't feel it. This body knew it was warm, that it was there and so so did he, but there was none of the faint whisper of discomfort he usually felt, that echo of feeling. He felt strangely detached for all that he seemed to have more control than usual, to be more firmly entrenched in what made the meat suit he wore than he ever was. He didn't even need to take action, to force him to act, not really, all he needed to do was think about what he wished to happen the pieces needed to get there just seemed to fall into place. He'd only had to give the order to fire, to kill that woman and he'd seen it play out like it was the simplest thing in the world, years old resentments, buried deep had surfaced so easily, drifted up from the depths of the unconscious mind to float like leaves on the water's surface. It had been nothing, it had cost him nothing, it was the simplest thing in the world to guide those thoughts to create the outcome he wanted, all it took was the faintest whisper of doubt, of resentment and he could make of it anything he wished. It was power, control, it was perfect.

He left that body sitting on the edge of the bed, pistol dangling from his hand, a puppet at rest, dreaming dreams of a better life. Lost in illusion. He slid instead into the body of an enforcer stationed on the first floor. One singular desire beating in his head and his heart like a drum of war: kill them all.

Bored.

He was so _bored_.

Guard duty was always boring. He'd told Antonio a dozen times that he was wasted on guard duty. He was made to be an assassin.

"You're not _ready_, Fredo. This isn't yet your _time_, Fredo," he grumbled, frowning at the old grandfather clock ticking away across from where he stood sentry.

Damn that old man. If he it had his way it would _never_ be his time. He was so damn paranoid that he'd be replaced as right hand by someone younger, someone better, someone who was a better shot, had a better head for figures and strategy. Like he really wanted to replace him. Stupid old fart. He didn't even _like_ thus family. He'd only even gone with them because they were the only ones offering. They were a way into the world he wanted so much to be a part of. He had no intention of sticking with them long term. He was a man with goals, with ambitions that were far greater than could ever be satisfied by this little backwoods loser of a Famiglia.

Vongola. That was the goal. And he knew he could get there. He knew he was good enough, he just needed to be noticed and he was sure that he'd be accepted into their ranks in no time. He had talent, he was something special, but he'd never attract their attention if these assholes just kept giving him these shit jobs. No, he needed to prove himself. To demonstrate his chops, show off his skills. He could make them see his value he just… just needed a way to do it.

Something big. Something flashy.

Something… _bold_.

He could kill them.

He would kill them all.

They'd never cared for him, never valued him. They were just a stepping stone, a thorn in his side, an obstacle in his path. It'd be the easiest thing in the world, wouldn't it? Easiest thing in the world to destroy them, to kill them all and then... and then he'd finally have a name, he'd be respected, feared.

Why hadn't he seen it before? It was so easy, so obvious.

They'd never look down on him, never ignore him or disregard him again. H-He'd show them. He'd show them all.

That he was more than good enough, that it _was_ his time. That they'd made a mistake treating him like an afterthought, like he was something less when he was obviously so much more.

Once he'd made the decision, the rest was easy.

He moved systematically through the lower part of the house silently killing each guard and servant on the ground floor. Blood splattered the walls and the floors.

It was so simple and it felt right as if this were what he had been born to do, as if this were his purpose. It felt better to be in this stolen body killing people than it had ever felt to be trapped within his own skin doing anything else. He wasn't good at being a person. He wasn't good at joking with them, at being with them. He liked it, but he knew he wasn't good at it and it never felt right and perfect like this did. This was what he needed. Not stolen scarves and unnecessary kindness. Just blood and brains and other bits blown red and dripping across white walls and warm tiles. This was all he'd ever needed. He might never feel at ease as a person, but as a monster he was magnificent.

This was all he needed to feel… complete, whole, in control.

Someone shot the body he was in in the chest a half dozen times. He could feel the impact only in the way the muscles seized and jerked, the way he had to shift weight to remain on his feet. He couldn't feel the damage or the pain it caused and he couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out of him, mocking and almost hysterical. He couldn't feel _anything_ and it was _glorious_. As the body bled out from the gapping wound in his chest, he turned it to fire a last shot at his attacker, drilling a bullet neatly into the left side of the woman's head. He laughed again, a dark, bubbling, choking sound as the body he had stolen crumpled, unable to remain standing in the face of such tremendous blood loss. He abandoned it and stole the body of one of the children on the second floor.

_Kill your mother._

She hated it here.

Hated this place.

Hated Mommy for making her come here, for taking her away from Daddy. Everything had been good when Daddy was with her. When Daddy was there. This was Mommy's fault. It was all her fault that she was here. That Daddy was gone. That scary Uncle Geno kept visiting her while Mommy was out drinking or…

_No._

_Enough._

She hadn't wanted to come here. She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to be here. She just wanted to go away, go somewhere far away where she… where she…

She was somewhere else.

Somewhere far away and she never had to go back to that place.

She was somewhere beautiful and nothing hurt.

He strangled the girl's mother, tiny hands crushing the trachea with the uncommon strength the human realm allowed. He watched the light and confusion in the woman's eyes die and he couldn't stop laughing. He wasn't even sure why it was funny or if it even was, but he kept giggling in that child's voice as he slipped from one room to the next, summoned a real illusion of his sword to hand and stabbed the other children to death in their beds. They all died never knowing that anything was wrong. They'd all be so _surprised_ when they awoke in the realms below when they were ushered on to other lives, different lives. If they were lucky those lives would be better. If they weren't… well, he'd probably end up sending those unlucky souls back to try again at some point in the future.

And that was funny too.

Soon everyone was dead except the man he'd started with, the head of the family whose name didn't care to remember. He strolled down the corridor humming to himself, leaving bloody footprints behind him on the plush carpet as he walked through blood pool after blood pool. In some places the carpet was so thick with blood that it squelched beneath the weight of his stolen body and it made him laugh every time for no reason at all. The pistol he'd used to kill his wife was in the pocket of his robe and it banged awkwardly against his hip as he moved. He made a note never to carry a gun that way. It seemed uncomfortable.

Not that he would really know.

He couldn't feel it.

He laughed again, flopping down in the Boss' office chair, twirling it so it spun around and around. It made his head spin a little and he wrote it off as a bad idea that he shouldn't repeat.

He spent an hour reading and memorizing information the boss kept in his safe before feeding it through the shredder. Once he was done he took the gun from his pocket and shot himself, angling the gun so that the bullet took him in the throat. He would die, but it wouldn't be immediate. He let the body drop to the floor, he could taste blood in his mouth as he let the boss' consciousness bleed through, let him remember all that he had done with his hands. The wife he had murdered, the child he had shot, walking through the blood and guts and brains of his family laughing. He felt his horror, his terror, his devastation and it was everything he could have hoped for.

This was all he was meant for. This was all he truly needed. He just wanted them all to suffer like this, to suffer like they had suffered and finally to die. It was magnificent and he could taste blood in his mouth, gurgling in his throat even though he couldn't feel it and he slid away as he felt the man's light dying, as the man sobbed and choked and beat useless hands against his expensive, ruined rug.

He felt as if his soul were being tugged in a dozen directions at once as he relinquished the mind of that dying man. The strongest pull by far was that of his own body, the familiar shape and feel calling him back. He could feel Ken and Chikusa as well. Chikusa was still sleeping, a foggy wall of dreams he couldn't penetrate, but Ken was awake and scared. He could feel how… agitated and restless and angry and afraid he was.

He'd done that.

He supposed he should feel bad about that, but he didn't. He didn't feel anything, not even guilt and that was refreshing. He thought about how easy it would be to slide into Ken's body and kill them all or, better yet, just himself. Dash his head against the tiles with Ken's unnatural strength. Would he die if he had nowhere to return to? Would he linger on like this, sliding from body to body and life to life without a care in the world, broken and free? Finally untethered. Would it matter to them? Would they miss him or would they be relieved? Free of any perceived debt and able to go their own way. Would it hurt them? Would they be able to survive on their own? Marked by Esterneo and barely aware that what they had done, what they had helped him do, hadn't been enough to destroy the family that had hurt them, maimed them, made them? Would they be better off without him or would that just mean they would die more quickly or, worse by far, that they might be easily recaptured and restained and made to suffer once more?

Perhaps he should kill them and himself then? Maybe that was the answer. Maybe that was what was best.

They could all die here in this peaceful, quiet place in the depths of winter.

"Please, please, please wake up," Ken rasped, fingers tight and white-knuckled where they gripped his shirt. He knelt with his forehead pressed against his chest.

Had he been there like that all this time?

"Please. Please don't die. Please don't leave. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, _I__'__m sorry._"

He hadn't made a decision, or he hadn't realized he had at any rate, until he found himself waking up in his own body, shaking and sickened by the realization of what he'd almost done.

"Mukuro?" Ken smiled as he lifted his head, but the smile faded almost immediately. "What's wrong? Are you…." He trailed off, lifting a shaking hand to touch the tears that were leaking unbidden from his traitorous eye. "You're…."

"It's nothing," Mukuro managed, knocking Ken's hand away and wiping frantically at his face with his sleeve.

"Yeah, yeah, okay, sure," he bit his lip and looked away. "Sorry."

Mukuro shoved himself up and away, rolling onto his hands and knees. He felt sick, his stomach roiling dangerously. He could still taste blood in his mouth, thick and sharp and vile. He'd just killed almost a hundred people. Strangers he'd known almost nothing about. He'd killed men and women and children just the same. Whether they were good or bad or indifferent hadn't mattered all that had mattered was killing them, making them suffer and die. He'd felt nothing but a yawning chasm of emptiness that could never be filled. And the worst part of it had been how natural it had felt as if that were his truest, purest self and the genial mask he wore from day to day were only that: a mask. A mask to hide the monster that lurked inside.

He needed to go, to move, to be away from this space and the bullets and the lingering smell of burnt flesh and gunpowder.

"Sorry. It… that was really scary," Ken commented as Mukuro stumbled to his feet and away from him, almost falling in his hurry to get to the door. "Hey, what's… where are you going? What's-"

Blood on his hands and in his mouth and he could have done anything, _anything_ and they would have let him, wouldn't have been able to stop him, would never have even _known_ and he….

He fumbled the locks open and flung the door wide, uncaring of how loud it was as it slammed into the wall. He stumbled outside and slipped on the icy steps, half sliding and half tumbling into the banked snow beside the porch. He hit hard, his knees scrapping rock, and he threw up blood across the freshly fallen snow.

He was still retching when he heard Ken step out behind him cautiously.

"Jesus," he murmured, close, too close. He felt a hand pat at his back gingerly.

"Don't! Don't touch me," Mukuro rasped, red spraying dark across the white crystals as he snagged some of the clean snow and tossed it back futilely in Ken's direction as if that might be enough to ward him off. Him and his awful misplaced _concern_. "Just… don't _fucking_ touch me."

"Mukuro, you're…" Ken sighed, discontented. "If not me, who? You want me to go wake Chikusa?"

"No! Just… Ken, I…" He coughed, wet and painful, spitting another glob of blood into the snow, his nose was running and he wiped at it irritably, unsurprised when his sleeve came away red. He couldn't stand his kindness now, their kindness, not now, not _now_. Not after….

Not _ever_.

He should make them go. He should make them leave. He should tell them all the things he had done and maybe they _would_.

He could hear the steps creak and a quick glance told him that Ken was sitting down on the edge of the icy steps. They groaned protest beneath his weight, but Ken didn't seem to notice or care. Ken's feet were bare as he settled them into the snow bank beside him and Mukuro shifted enough to glare up at him, "At least put some damn shoes on, idiot."

Ken smiled brilliantly down at him and his stomach rolled uneasily. He turned back around and threw up again, bile burned his throat and he could almost lie to himself that any tears leaking from his eye were a consequence of that.

"Nah, it's fine, I think I probably heal up frostbite as quickly as I heal up everything else."

"Doesn't mean it won't hurt, stupid," Mukuro coughed, pointedly glaring down into the snow rather than up at Ken again.

"Yeah, that's true. Maybe I'll get some later."

"You're a moron."

"Probably," Ken agreed cheerfully.

They were both silent for a long time, Mukuro bleeding and crying silently in the snow while Ken watched over him. He didn't hate it. He wanted them to go, but he also….

He also….

"It's okay," Ken said suddenly, out of nowhere. Like he'd been having some silent conversation in his head and just decided to start speaking aloud for the heck of it. "I mean… I know you're not… I'm not afraid of you, you know. You smell like death. I mean, not like rotting gross death, but just… like turned earth and dark places. At least you do to me, I don't know. But it's not… it's not _scary_. The basement was scary, those people were scary, but that isn't you. You aren't like them."

Mukuro laughed, a rusty screaming sound. He knew he was vaguely hysterical. He knew, but there was no stopping it. Not now. Not yet. It was all too much, far too much. "Oh yeah? And how do you know that? How do you know _anything_? You don't _know_ me, Ken. You never have and you never will. I could kill you in your sleep or I could kill you right now. I could make you kill yourself or Chikusa or him you and you'd never even know it until you were dead. And I wouldn't even feel bad because you belong to me. I could break you into pieces, turn you inside out, make you every inch the monster you sometimes think you are. Don't you know that? Don't you know by now what I'm capable of? Why aren't you _running_?"

Ken was silent for so long that Mukuro briefly entertained the idea that maybe he was. Running away on silent feet, waking Chikusa and dragging him from his bed and out the back. That he'd turn around and they'd be gone, leaving nothing more than a brief peaceful memory of a life that he didn't deserve.

It was a nice thought.

He'd be better alone.

Or if not better than at least less confused.

But then Ken huffed out another sigh and he heard the creak and groan of wood as Ken shifted and moved and slid further down those icy cold steps and into the snow beside him. "Animals can tell about people," he commented, his voice uncharacteristically soft, almost gentle. "My grandma had this really great cat, Mister Socks, and he was the best. Like he'd sleep on my lap sometimes and I'd feed him tuna and we'd watch the television and it was really… it was really good."

"Am I you or Mr. Socks in this analogy?"

"What the hell's an analogy?"

"Nevermind," Mukuro murmured, sitting back so that he was kneeling in the cold, wet snow instead of practically laying in it. He plunged his bloody hands and sleeves into the fresher snow at his side, using it to scrub some of the worst mess away before lifting numb, wet, freezing hands to wipe his no doubt horrifying, bloody cheeks and lips and nose. "It doesn't matter."

"Yeah, okay. So, anyway, Mister Socks didn't like a lot of people. He bit my Grandma sometimes and she swore at him and threw things, but he never bit me and I think that was maybe because he could tell I wouldn't hurt him on purpose like she did sometimes. So, I mean that's just kind of how animals are, right? They just kind of know how people are and I figure I'm kind of more animal than person now so I've gotta be able to tell about people too. I know you feel bad, but it's not… it's not your fault, okay? You might hurt us sometimes, but accidents happen, you know? I mean, I break shit all the time and Chikusa knows more just by looking at us then we probably want him too, but… I don't think any of that really makes us bad for each other. You don't mean to hurt us, not really. So, it's okay. If you fuck up, just say you're sorry and it's fine. That's what you told me, right?"

"Not in those exact words," Mukuro grumbled, but he didn't fight it when he felt Ken sink into the snow beside him, felt his hands settle against his shoulders. He just let Ken bully him around until he was lying down with his head against Ken's jean-clad knees. If he hadn't felt so weak he wouldn't have allowed it, he told himself. He even managed to almost believe it.

"Stop lurking, I can totally smell you, Kappa. And even if I couldn't, I'd still be able to hear you breathing," Ken called and Mukuro was confident that he'd waited to do so until he was quite certain he had Mukuro pinned in such a way that he couldn't easily escape.

"Shut up," Chikusa replied, his voice rough with sleep as he shuffled out onto the porch and sat down gingerly on the steps beside them. That terrible hat was pulled down low on his brow, it was really too big for him so it was falling down into his eyes. Of course, in this weather it was probably reasonably pleasant to have such a heavy hat.

Mukuro sighed and closed his eyes as he felt Chikusa's fingers settle against his hair, light and tentative. He almost smiled when he heard the soft smack of something hitting Ken in the head. "Put them on. Your toes will fall off. Could hear you blathering on from kilometers away."

"Yeah, yeah, shut up, yourself," Ken grumbled in return, shifting a little as he shuffled each foot into a shoe of some sort. "It's three in the morning and it's not like there's anyone around to hear us anyway."

The rustle of cloth was probably Chikusa shrugging.

Neither of them were wrong: the cabin seemed far enough from anywhere that it was safe for the moment, but the open space and forest seemed to make even soft sounds loud and pronounced, crisp as the white snow that covered everything. It had been cold enough that they hadn't felt the urge to do a real survey of the area since night was falling and the storm had come on quickly. There very well might have been neighbors within shouting distance; it was impossible to say for sure one way or the other.

"We should go inside," Mukuro murmured, starting to push up and away from them only to have Chikusa's hand press insistently against his forehead, keeping him pinned to Ken's lap.

"You look terrible, better not," Chikusa murmured.

"Yeah, what he said," Ken added, patting at Mukuro's side. "A little snow never hurt anyone."

"But a lot can kill you and my legs are going numb," Mukuro muttered and it might well have even been true. It was a little difficult to tell since everything always felt a little numb. He had memories of pain, of numbness, and aching knees and hands and feet, from other lives, but in his own body everything he felt seemed like a ghostly afterimage of those sensations. Enough so that he knew when he was hurt, when he was doing something to harm himself, but not much more than that since he felt most injuries as little more than a dull ache. It was disturbing and it made him feel… even less human than he already did. Still, he didn't really want to get up yet. It was easier to just lie there for the moment and let them touch him, attempt to comfort them in their own awkward ways. It was times like these, times spent with them, near them, between them, that he felt the most… normal, the least like the monster he knew himself to be. They didn't make him feel like anything but important and valued and…

"So, like I was saying," Ken commented, ignoring his protest as if he'd never spoken. "It's gonna be okay. We've got each other and even if we mess up and hurt each other, we'll figure it out, right?"

Mukuro opened his eyes to give Ken a pitying look before shifting his gaze to Chikusa. "He's too stupid for us to ever leave him alone, you realize that, right? Take responsibility for him, Chikusa. If you don't he'll take candy from strangers and probably end up tied up in the back of a panel van or something equally stupid."

"Shut up, I would not! I know about stranger danger. I saw a television program about it once."

"He runs with scissors too. He's precious really," Chikusa commented, ignoring Ken's defense.

"Shut up, Kappa! And so what? I could fall and put them in my chest and it'd heal right up in a couple of seconds anyway."

"False assumption," Chikusa replied, shaking his head sadly. "Might just kill you."

"Well, apparently tonight is a good night for exparea-expearia-"

"Experimenting?" Chikusa finished dryly.

"Shut up! I knew that! Let's just go find some scissors and see. Come on, inside, let's go," Ken replied, urging both Mukuro and Chikusa to get up so they could go try this new, stupid theory out.

As it turned out, he absolutely could heal up a wound caused by scissors being imbedded in his chest, but it took about five minutes.

Five minutes during which Ken whined and complained while he stood on a box in the kitchen so he could spit blood into the tall sink. Chikusa rolled his eyes and threw stale marshmallows at him from a bag he'd found in a box near the fireplace.

"Knock it off, Kappa, or I'm gonna come over there and spit blood all over you!" Ken snapped, slapping the marshmallow projectiles back in Chikusa's direction.

He could tell by the way they kept sneaking glances at him that it was all done mostly for his benefit and he found himself smiling as he leaned back against the wall next to the fireplace, the gun and the bullets tucked away once more where they belonged at the bottom of his bag. He was exhausted and everything hurt and later he'd probably need to have another breakdown about everything that had happened tonight, but for now, for this brief moment, he let himself enjoy the dull sensation of warmth and the reluctant knowledge that there was nowhere else he'd rather be.


	12. The Loser and The Liar

_"When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."_  
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

**-ooo-**  
THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 123  
ELSEWHERE/NAMIMORI  
February 22, 2003

**TSUNAYOSHI**

He must have fallen asleep.

That had to be it.

Though he wasn't all that sure why it would have happened, really, since he hadn't even been all that tired in the first place, but there wasn't really any other explanation that made sense.

It wasn't as if he'd _never _fallen asleep in class before, but it had been a while. With Reborn popping up unannounced and always keeping such a close eye on him, he always felt nervous, jittery, _especially_ in class. Like he was always waiting for the other embarrassing shoe to drop.

It never actually helped, of course.

The really crazy things only happened when he least expected them, when he'd already dropped his guard and relaxed, so if he were looking for something to happen it almost guaranteed nothing would.

Which would have been _fine_... except if he ever let himself think that than he'd definitely relax and something _would_.

It was a vicious, stupid cycle.

Still, it kept him awake and alert in class, even if it didn't make him any better at concentrating or learning the material. He was still always caught off guard when the teacher called on him and Gokudera was constantly trying to get his attention to give him the answers to the questions, which was nice of him, but always made him feel like a real charity case.

Though, he supposed that wasn't really that far from the truth.

Even after almost a year of Reborn's efforts to make him better than he was, he was still failing most subjects. He wasn't failing them _quite_ as badly as before, but failing was still failing and so he continued the inevitable trudge towards advancement and another year of disappointing everyone who cared about him with his inability to improve in any meaningful way.

He really wasn't sure why Reborn kept bothering with him at all when he was clearly beyond help. His scores on his last exams had been awful and he was pretty sure there was no way he would manage to improve enough to catch up by the year's end. He wondered vaguely whether if he just kept falling further and further behind he'd actually start regressing completely at some point. If he forgot how to read or do even the most basic math problems would that finally be enough to get everyone to give up on him once and for all?

At least no one would be expecting a total dropout loser who couldn't even read to be some kind of mafia big shot.

So, there was a definite upside to being a failure at least.

Though, with his luck, they'd probably want him anyway.

"...Sawada!"

He startled badly as the instructor called his name.

For what was probably not the first based on how red his face was.

_Crap._

"Uh, sorry, sir, um, what was the question?"

His classmates laugh while their instructor merely gives him a look of long suffering that seems one step short of an eye roll.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Gokudera gesturing frantically to him behind the cover of his notebook, but he no idea what any of those hand signals actually meant, if they meant anything at all.

"I asked you to come up here and complete the sentence on the board."

Because _of course_ he did.

He stares at the chalkboard, stomach sinking as he realizes that he recognizes one word out of the eight words on the board.

Lion.

He has absolutely no idea why the word 'lion' would have stuck with him when he somehow managed to forget all the other words Reborn had tried to teach him, but there it is.

_Lion._

What did the lion _do_?

Why did the lion do it?

Was there hunter involved?

Maybe the hunter could kill both him and the lion and put them both out of their misery?

Didn't seem likely.

He pushed himself up out of his seat and began the long, slow walk to inevitable humiliation while Gokudera whispered encouragement at his back.

_Ugh._

Why couldn't the ground just open up and swallow him or something?

And, of course, he hadn't been able to, because of _course _he hadn't and in the end he slunk back to his desk, ears and face burning as he ducked his head to avoid Yamamoto's commiserating smile and Gokudera's incredibly embarrassing 'nice try, boss'.

As soon as he was seated again he'd dropped his head on the desk hoping to at least avoid the temptation to look over at Kyouko until the worst of the heat had left his face and the rest of the classes gleeful titters had finally died down. He really didn't think she was one of the people laughing at him, but he _really _didn't want take the chance of looking and finding out she was.

The instructor went back to his lecture and his classmates eventually quieted down and the class continued to pass and he should probably pay attention this time, but he couldn't quite summon the will. His face still felt overheated and the desktop was cool against his cheek.

It wasn't like the instructor would call on him again anyway. For better or worse he'd had his shot and blown it like he always did. At least now he'd be content to leave him alone until lunch at least.

It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

Of course, it would be nice if he could get something right for once.

Anything at all would do.

So he must have fallen asleep like that, face down, probably drooling across his desk and any chance he'd had of avoiding the burn of humiliation twice in one morning while their instructor droned on and on about things he should have been paying attention to.

That had to have been what happened, because he really can't think of how the heck else he might have ended up standing in a quiet forest, shivering in his school uniform as snow gusted around him.

"Hello?" He'd called, but the whistle of the wind through the trees seemed to steal the sound away, just eat it all up the moment the word passed his lips. He tried again and again, but the result was the same every time.

And it was really, really cold.

He hugged his arms around his chest, hopping from foot to foot and wishing he'd dreamed of something warmer or at least dreamed himself up a jacket or something.

He pinched his cheek, tweaking the skin hard and was only a little surprised that he didn't wake up.

Perfect.

Even his dreams hated him today.

After another minute of standing around freezing his butt off, he finally just started walking. He couldn't see anything except trees and snow and more trees and snow, but even if he didn't find anything it was worth the effort just to keep warm.

Except every step was a battle, the snow was heavy and wet and thick and so deep that he could barely lift his leg high enough to take actual steps. It took half a dozen panting, sweating, heaving steps before he realized that it was just easier to wade through it like he was wading through water.

Really, really, cold, heavy, horrible, slushy water.

And his hands were red and numb from flailing in the snow and looked, for some reason, ridiculously small. Like little kid small and he ended up tucking them away in his armpits, but it didn't really help much.

He squinted against the flurry of ice and snow the wind threw in his face.

He'd never been in a snowstorm before, not a _real_ snowstorm, but if this was what they were like… he really never wanted to be.

He'd barely gone more than a few feet and already the tip of his nose was numb and his eyes were tearing up, but it was so cold that the tears kept freezing on his lashes.

"Hello?" He tried again and again there was nothing but the howl of the wind to greet the sound and swallow it down.

But….

He was pretty sure he could hear someone crying….

"Boss?"

Gokudera's voice broke through the dream like a lightning strike, shattering the world around him and he startled awake, flailing and barely managing to catch his balance before he tipped over backwards.

"Wha-what?!" He managed, steadying his a body in the way he couldn't quite steady his racing heart.

He had no idea what his face looked like, but it must have been bad because when he looked up at him Gokudera's frowning, concerned expression _crumbled _the same way Lambo's did when he was denied candy. "I'm so sorry, boss! That was… oh, man, I shouldn't have woken you like that! Should I have let you sleep? No wonder you got that question wrong if you're so tired you fell asleep in class!"

"No, no, it's fine," he replied, waving his hands frantically as if that might do something to stave off Gokudera's sudden panic. He always floundered in the face of Gokudera's insistence on attributing his many failings to anything but the fact that he just sucked at life, never quite able to bring himself to correct him.

Though even when he tried, Gokudera usually didn't really hear him.

So, most of the time, he just ended up laughing along and agreeing with whatever logic pretzels he came up with just to get him to stop and change the subject. It always made him feel like one day Gokudera would finally realize he was actually an idiot after all and take off back to Italy in search of a leader who wasn't.

Not that he wanted to be Gokudera's leader, but he didn't want him to leave either.

It was confusing.

Fortunately this time, Yamamoto arrived beside them before Gokudera could really get going. He laughed as he leaned back against one of the neighboring desks and his presence instantly reset Gokudera's expression from flustered to eyebrow-twitching annoyance as he turned to glare at the taller boy. "And what are you laughing at, eh?"

"No wonder I have so much trouble with this stuff. I fall asleep in class all the time too," Yamamoto replied, his smile wide, arms folded behind his head.

"No, you have so much trouble because you're an moron, baseball idiot." Gokudera snarled up at him, tilting his head back, fingers fidgeting out a lighter from his pocket.

He'd still never been able to quite sell Gokudera on the idea that dynamite wasn't okay to use at school. Not that he liked the idea of him using it anywhere, period, but he liked to pick the battles he thought he stood a chance of winning when it came to Gokudera.

Thoughts filled with images of desks flying and exploding windows, he swiped the sleeve of his jacket across his desk quickly in the hopes of catching any possible drool and stood, grabbing his lunch box from his desk before reaching out to catch Gokudera's free hand and tug him away towards the door.

"Why don't we go get some lunch?" He asked, hoping that the distraction of food might be enough to derail the one-sided argument. He probably had enough money to buy him some bread if he needed to since Gokudera sometimes forgot to bring anything with him to eat during break.

"Yeah, o-of course, Boss," he replied and when he glanced back at him he found Gokudera was still scowling down at the ground, his face still a little red the way it usually got when he was overexcited or angry, but at least he wasn't glaring at Yamamoto anymore.

He turned his face up to offer Yamamoto a smile where he was still lingering near his desk staring after them. "I need to go buy something. Would you guys mind coming with me?"

"Sure," Yamamoto said his smile brightening as he fell into step behind them and Gokudera, still looking a little flustered, immediately began grouching at him for being too close.

Well, at least he'd put the lighter away.

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: ?  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE

**MUKURO**

He awoke to find himself in their cell, the dim emergency lights in the corridor beyond the only enough illumination to lighten the shadows across the floor and deepen those beneath on the bed where he sat, leaning against the wall with Ken's head in his lap and a keen awareness that he had no idea what day it was. He'd been dreaming again. Dreaming and remembering and his skin itched, uncomfortable and far too tight, as if it didn't quite fit right anymore.

He could see the dark of Marie's hair spread across the pillow across the aisle, blanket pulled up over her face so only the barest pale line of her forehead was visible. It seemed unusual to see her sleeping, she so often startled awake at his presence or specifically stayed up to pepper him with pointless questions and needle his fraying nerves with awkward conversation.

Everything was jumbled up in his mind, untidy, scenes and fragments of memory piled high in all the corners, teetering and precarious, waiting to tumble down on him at any moment.

How much time had passed since the last time he spoke with her?

How much since the last time he woke here?

The knowledge trembled uncertain in his mind, wavering and fragile as smoke. Every time he woke it seemed as if he were somewhere different with only the most cursory grasp on what day it was, on what he'd been dreaming about, what he'd been doing.

It was terrifying… or at least it should have been, but it felt disconnected, unreal, as if it belonged to someone else, just a residual dread that lingered in his veins, a fading fear that barely belonged to him at all.

If it wasn't Ken's bed it was the floor beside Chikusa's in the infirmary. Or if it were a particularly bad day, he'd wake up to find himself leaning against the door of his old cell down in solitary.

Sometimes he'd be covered in dirt or stripped down to his underwear, soaking wet and freezing on the cold concrete.

Sometimes it took him ages to remember how he'd gotten there and, even when -_if- _he _did_ remember, he could still never be completely certain whether he had actually remembered or whether he had just made something up to make himself feel better about it.

Though he never truly felt better.

It was getting more and more difficult to feel anything at all anymore as if his emotions were slowly being overloaded and disconnected until nothing remained of who he had been.

"Mukuro?"

Lancia's voice was always soft and familiar and sometimes he'd talk for minutes or hours about nothing. Telling him old stories he didn't want to hear again or terrible jokes he'd heard while he'd worked at that pawnshop in New York. Stupid American jokes that neither of them fully understood, but he'd tell them anyway and Mukuro would try not to give him the satisfaction of groaning when he'd pause dramatically after the punchline as if he to cue laughter he never received.

"What's the temperature inside of a tauntaun?"

He would always silently count out the moments and wonder if Lancia cared that he already knew the answer, if he offered the joke in hopes of pulling it from him.

"Lukewarm."

They weren't funny.

They weren't funny at all.

"What does Pooh bear call his girlfriend?"

One. Two. Three.

"Honey."

They never got better. He only knew ten or so and he always told them in a run, never one at a time, as if that was just the way it was supposed to go. As if he were reading from a script.

Still.

There'd always been something about the sound of his voice that….

It didn't matter.

He'd spent so much time when he was small listening to the sound of Lancia's voice, quiet words spoken outside open doors late at night.

Had Lancia slept at all during those first few weeks? Had he caught naps in the afternoon so he could stay up all night to offer a running commentary to distract him for the shadows crawling across still unfamiliar floors and walls.

Why?

It had never made sense to him.

It made even less sense now.

Lancia would talk and talk until his voice was hoarse and even after. He'd never fall silent while he was still there. For all he knew Lancia might have even kept it up long after he picked himself up and stumbled out of solitary in search of a shower or sleep or different company.

Most of the time he left without ever responding….

But not always….

Sometimes he'd find himself tripping into conversation, into the familiar banter that had characterized much of their years together.

They never talked about anything real, anything substantial, not really.

Or if they did, he'd forgotten all about it, swept it into the corners of his mind with the rest of the junk he couldn't find the motivation to sort out.

As far as he knew, Lancia never asked him about Ken or Chikusa and sometimes he liked to pretend it was because he didn't care and not because he didn't trust him to tell him the truth.

More often Lancia coaxed him into conversation about nonsense, meaningless things.

"This is supposed to be a dick, right?" Lancia had asked one day and he could hear his fingers tapping against the wall and it was easy enough to picture what he was looking at.

"What do you mean supposed to be? It's obviously a dick," he inquired, remembering the obscene drawings he'd begun carving into the walls during the long months of his incarceration.

A soft scratching sound filled the space between them as Lancia snorted, "It isn't _obviously _anything, shithead. Could be a fucking corn silo or a really shitty space ship for all I'd know from just looking at it. You gotta add the balls or it could just be any damn thing, really, and then what the hell's the point of that? Didn't they teach you anything at murderous delinquent school?"

"I'm afraid the art program at the Murderous Delinquent Education Center just isn't what it used to be during your day, Mr. Lancia. Budget cuts. The alumni are simply terrible at fundraising."

"It's all about standards, kid. You wouldn't want the next joker who ends up in this cell to be confused about what you were trying to say, would you? It's all fine and well to want to let folks know that you want your guards to eat a giant bag of dicks, but this could just as easily be a bag of lollipops or like some really shitty, half-finished flowers."

"You do realize that I didn't put you in there to critique my art skills, correct?"

"Yeah, I figured, but since I don't have anything better to fucking do that's what you're gonna get. Next time you decide to visit, bring me a fucking book or something to keep me occupied. If you ask real nicely, I might even read some of it to you if you're looking to hear something a bit different than the same old stories."

"Mr. Lancia?"

"Yeah, kid?"

He didn't mean to say it. Didn't even mean to think it, but the words still slipped out, strange and fond and true.

"I'm going to miss you."

He should have played them off, should have quantified them with an insult to make them less meaningful… less _sincere_. But when he opened his mouth, grasping for something, any words at all, panic rose up in his throat to strangle anything else he might have said.

"Kid?" Lancia's voice was close, quiet and concerned. "You okay?"

No.

He wasn't okay.

He'd never been okay.

He scrambled up, shoving away from the door, scrapping bare feet and bloody palms against the rough stone as he fled.

He didn't remember leaving the block.

Didn't remember what he did after.

Wasn't sure any of it had happened at all.

Everything was like that now.

Days, moments, hours, weeks bleeding into each other and falling away and he understood, in moments like these when the world was calm and his thoughts ran in a single direction for once, that he had made a mistake. That stirring all that up, fishing around for answers to questions he hadn't even really understood, would inevitably prove a fatal error.

That he'd be lucky if he didn't take them all down with him when he finally went completely mad.

Sometimes he thought about the scalpels in the Infirmary, about the needles that were still hidden beneath Chikusa's skin.

It would be an easy out, a messy end, but infinitely better than the possibility of what he might do once he stopped having these lucid moments, once he stopped being able to tell truth from fiction, distinguish ally from foe.

Ken stirred and blinked up at him and he wasn't sure how much time had passed… minutes? Seconds? Hours? Days? Was this the same day or a different one?

Did it matter?

"Hey. You look kind of freaked out. You okay?" Ken murmured sleepily and Mukuro nodded sharply even though they both knew it was a lie.

Ken watched him for another moment, his gaze clearing as sleep faded beneath the weight of wakefulness. "It's February twenty-second," he ventured finally, his voice soft and steady. "It's a Saturday so there'll be lasagna for dinner. It's not awful. There's also salad, but they use too much vinegar in the dressing. So that's fucking nasty. You should probably try to choke it down anyway. You haven't been eating." He poked him in the ribs and he batted the hand away irritably. "You look like shit. How's Chikusa?"

"Healing," Mukuro replied, because that was the only safe answer. The only thing that wasn't a lie and he hated the way Ken nodded and turned his gaze away. Hated that awkward little quirk of a smile on his lips that felt like ground glass with the way it grated against his nerves.

"Good, yeah, that's good," he mumbled nodding to himself.

He'd stopped asking to be taken in to see him at some point. He wasn't sure when, just that he'd been grateful for it. He was pretty sure he hadn't let it slip that Chikusa had asked him not to bring him, but it was difficult to be sure. Things got mixed up and turned around so he could never be certain of anything.

"Were you dreaming?" He asked and he wondered if it was idle curiosity or actual interest that made him ask. If he were trying to worry out the cause of his distress or just bored. It was sometimes difficult to tell with Ken… or maybe he just wanted it to be. The weight of Ken's concern had always been difficult to bear.

"Remembering," he answered honestly, because there was no reason not to tell him. The memory was still close, prickling beneath his skin with the smell of gunpowder and the cold, wet of winter snow. "The cabin," he cleared his throat, pitching his voice low. "Almost killing you at the cabin."

Ken huffed out a frustrated sigh and shifted away to sit up and lean back against the wall beside him, probably just he could glare at him on equal terms. "Why do you always do that? I mean, seriously, you didn't _do_ anything. Even if you thought about it, you didn't actually do it. You must just really like wallowing in guilt, because I don't know why the hell else you insist on dwelling on this shit the way you do. I mean, I _think_ about doing shit all the time. I think about killing the guards and gutting that guy down the row who stares at M's butt all the time and I think about sneaking back in the kitchen to take a piss in that shitty soup they serve on Fridays.

"What I'm saying is that I think about all _kinds_ of stuff, but I don't actually _do any of it_ so I don't stress myself out about what I could have done, because in the end I didn't and that's what matters, right? So, you didn't almost kill us at the stupid cabin."

"I don't think you realize how close a thing it was."

"Whatever. You still didn't hurt anyone but yourself. I mean, seriously, you flipped your shit like a giant drama queen because you thought about _maybe_ hurting us. Fuck, I can't believe you're still freaking out about it. It's been like, what? Almost ten freaking years, right? Anyway everything was _fine_ in the end, even if it was a pretty dick move. Plus, the rest of the night wasn't so bad, right? At least you assholes seemed to be having a pretty good time while I bled all over the kitchen. Chikusa kept throwing fucking marshmallows that smelled like stale, sooty butt at me and I remember you laughing pretty damn hard about it. 'Course then we all went back to sleep and you woke us up screaming like two hours later because you had just the _worst_ fucking night terrors back then."

"We all did," Mukuro answered, hiding a smile against the back of his hand. It had been rare during that first year when they hadn't all been woken up several times a night by screams or flailing limbs. It was part of the reason he'd made a point of sleeping as little as possible.

Ken snorted, shrugging as a grin tugged at his lips, "Yeah, I guess so. But you know what I remember most about that day?"

"What?"

"That was the first time you let us get really close to you like that. We'd been hauling our asses all over the countryside for _months_ and we'd even killed that little Famiglia in the foothills and, I mean, it was a mess, but we did it, right? And you _still _wouldn't even let us even _stand_ that close to you half the time."

"In all fairness, you usually smelled pretty terrible."

"Oh, shut up, Chikusa made me wash up all the damn time."

"Once or twice a week does not qualify as 'all the time', it barely even qualifies as 'often enough'."

"Yeah, whatever. I still though, for like a long time, that you thought you were gonna catch something from us or something or maybe you just didn't like us, so maybe you only kept us around because we were useful."

"Oh."

"Yeah, sorry. Chikusa was the one who figured out you were trying to look out for us."

"Chikusa did?"

"I know, crazy, right? Usually I'm the insightful one."

Mukuro stifled a laugh against the back of his hand.

"Oh, shut the fuck up. _Anyway_, you kept doing all this dangerous shit, taking all these stupid risks yourself, like with that fucking bullet. You could do all this stuff we didn't really understand and you were scary and powerful and it made me, us, feel safe most of the time. But then you'd do this crazy, reckless stuff and it would scare the hell out of us. I think we were always waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know? For you to get yourself killed, because you… during those first months you always acted like you had to do it yourself and like you didn't even care if you made it through or maybe like you hoped you did. Sometimes it seemed like you didn't want to be there, to be _anywhere_. Like just fucking _breathing_ was a chore."

"Did I?" He asked softly, but he could tell he wasn't listening, too caught in his own thoughts.

"I mean, that place was bad for us, all of us, but it was worse for you."

Ken glanced over at him suddenly and he looked… scared and somehow seeing that look in his eyes was like stepping off a cliff, like plummeting to earth with no chance of survival. He didn't know what he was going to say, not really, but he knew it would change things.

"Don't," he whispered, but Ken was already speaking, fast and whisper soft, spilling the words out like they were a confession, a burden he'd carried for years. Each one slammed down heavy and solid as stone to form the beginnings of a wall between them.

"I could smell you all over the place in there and upstairs too. You _lived_ there. They brought us there, took us from our homes and shoved us into those labs. We were there for weeks, months maybe and they were horrible, really fucking awful, but you… you _lived_ in that house. You'd been there for _years_, you had to be, I mean, those rooms, those halls were so thick with your scent. I don't know what they did to you, but… that whole damn house was just fucking rank with fear. Your fear and it was… I…."

"You never said anything. You never even thought about it," he's not sure if he means it to come out as an accusation. For the words to burn in his throat, harsh and unforgiving, but they _do_. He'd… it had never occurred to him that Ken _would_ keep secrets from him, from them, much less that he _could_.

Ken shook his head, laughing low and shaky, "You guys always act like I can't keep a secret, but I've been keeping your secrets for fucking _years_. I'm not always great at it, but when it really, really matters… I manage okay. And that night… I was so fucking scared. I was so fucking scared that you'd finally decided you were done and it was my fault. And, I mean, what the fuck were we supposed to do without you? You got us out and you kept us safe and we couldn't do _anything_ for you to help you, to stop you. We couldn't do anything for you that _mattered_. And it fucking _sucked_. And even when I realized you were still alive I… I was so scared that you wouldn't come back, that it was my fault for not stopping you, for not taking the gun out of your bag or maybe for… for making things worse for you with that fucking Christmas bullshit. I mean, I _knew_ I shouldn't have tried to do the Christmas thing; I knew we weren't… but I thought… it was _stupid_. _I _was stupid. I don't think Chikusa even realized that's what it was, but you did and you looked so fucking freaked out. Like I'd punched you in the freaking throat or something and I just-"

"It was the first gift I'd ever gotten," he cut in, stopping the stream of Ken's words and startling him back into reality. He could feel his wide-eyed stare even as he purposefully glared down at his hands to avoid looking at him.

"What like ever? Like _ever_ ever?"

"Ever," Mukuro confirmed, pulling his knees up against his chest and resting his cheek against them, turning his head away to face the darkness at the back of the cell. "F-Father didn't believe in presents. He had people purchase things I might need to develop, I think. Necessary things. I… never had many toys, such as they were, nothing that didn't have some sort of practical use or application. I learned to read from textbooks and instruction manuals, from newspapers and cereal boxes. I didn't even really understand the concept of presents until I was…" He paused, trailing off into uncertainty. There were still many things he didn't know, might never know. He waved an impatient hand in the air between them as if that might vanish the unease of all those blank spaces.

The silence that came after was oppressive, irrationally irritating and he chanced a glance back at Ken to find him still staring at him, as he'd known he would be, looking gob smacked. He felt that irritation slowly turning to anger in his chest as he narrowed his eyes, fingers biting into his thighs, "…what."

It wasn't quite a question.

He wasn't even sure what it was about that look was making him angry, just that it was.

Ken looked more confused than ever, hesitant and unsure and that anger burst into rage, boiling through him so fast and hot he was surprised it didn't blister his skin. He was gritting his teeth so hard they hurt as he managed to grind out another demand, "What."

"It's just…" Ken began, slowly, hesitantly, his voice as cautious as his expression. "You never talk about… about before. You've always… I've always…"

Before… _right_.

He'd been… remembering.

Before there'd been nothing but blank space and the occasional disjointed images of nightmares. And now... now there was...raw edges and painful splatters of emotion. It was still a puzzle with far too many missing pieces, but he could see its shape now, the vague impression of form and the substance within.

"I told you I was… I…" He trailed off, suddenly uncertain.

_Had_ he told him- them- what he was doing? He'd meant to, but… that meant nothing. Intention meant nothing without follow through.

Had he told them?

Warned them?

Maybe?

Or had that… had that all been a dream too? A dream or a memory? What was this? Were they really here at all? Talking like this? Or was he somewhere else? Someone else? Dreaming this up? He… he couldn't quite… there was something he was supposed to be doing and he couldn't… he couldn't quite….

His head ached, sharp and sudden and then the moment shattered like glass around him. And there was a dizzying tilting whirl of vertigo and the shadows bled and swirled around him before settling back into place. They were close again, too close. Ken's head in his lap once more and he was nodding up at him as if they were in the midst of conversation, calm, smiling, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and everything was fine.

He was stroking his fingers through his hair, gentle and fond and not at all on the verge of ripping it out.

Which was a strange thought.

Had he been angry?

Yes?

No?

It seemed like he had been, but...

He wasn't certain.

Ken just nodded up at him as if he understood and maybe he did, at least a little bit about… something.

But he wasn't sure what.

This wasn't...

What had they been talking about?

Why...?

"It's funny. I never got fun presents when I was living with my Grandma. She didn't have a lot of money and she had a lot of grandchildren and so we all got like sweaters and shit. Copies of videos she picked up at a discount at the shop. She didn't have a VCR so I never actually got to watch them though. I think the idea was I'd take them over and watch them at my cousins' place, but… that didn't ever happen. We didn't really get along. So, anyway, since I couldn't watch them, I'd line the boxes up on the little dresser where I kept my clothes and stuff and pretend they were, I don't know, art or something. I'd make up stories to go with them too and, man, I saw one of them on TV when we were in New York and my story was like a zillion times better so I'm actually kinda glad I couldn't watch them now. So, anyway, I used to watch a lot of TV programs at her place, because she had a TV that worked alright if you whacked it a couple of times and the people on the television always gave each other gifts. Like, you know, _good_ gifts that really _meant_ something and there'd be smiles and everyone seemed to like people more after they got things like that and I thought... that's what families do. And I just… I wanted to have that with you guys."

"Sap," Mukuro muttered, rolling his eyes.

"Grinch. So, can we do it next year? Like for real? Like cut down a tree and put up lights and shit? Give presents and stuff and not get all weird about it?"

"You're assuming we won't be in jail or dead at that point?"

"Yeah, I mean, _obviously_ we won't be. Everything is obviously we're gonna get out of here and things are gonna be perfect in the new place and we'll be happy and safe and everything will be great. Don't look at me like that. I can be optimistic," Ken's grin was ridiculously wide.

"I suppose one of us has to be," Mukuro replied, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back against the wall. Sometimes Ken's enthusiasm was exhausting and his head still hurt. "Do whatever you want."

"Lancia too?"

Mukuro glanced back down to find Ken watching him, cautious and expectant, practically wiggling with the desire to ask. "What?"

"He could be back here. He isn't and I just… what happened?"

Mukuro shrugged, expression carefully blank, "Lancia is in solitary."

"Yeah, I figured, but that isn't really a reason, right? I mean, you're walking around posing as a guard so it's not like you couldn't-"

"I don't want to talk about Lancia."

"But…."

"Why do you even care?" He could feel the anger flaring back to life like Ken's confusion was a stick stirring the ashes of a dying fire.

Anger?

Had he been angry before?

He wasn't sure.

Still, he glared down at Ken with narrowed eyes. "When did he become so important to you?"

Ken frowned, "He's not… I mean, it's just he's… he's one of us. We need him, right?'

"No," Mukuro snapped, pain shooting through him as he slipped from one realm to another so that he could shove Ken off his lap and dump him on the floor.

"Mukuro? What the hell…?" Ken sputtered, scrambling to catch himself and just managing to avoid cracking his jaw against the concrete.

Mukuro just stared at him, the heat of anger turning to something deeper, infinitely colder. "Mr. Lancia is not one of _us_. He has never _been_ one of us and you'd do well to remember that. And we don't need him."

"Since fucking when?"

"Excuse me?"

"He's been with us for years! He takes care of us, doesn't he? So… _why_ are you acting like this all of a sudden? What's going on?"

And all he can hear is an echo of not good enough, _never_ good enough like a punch to the gut. Because he wouldn't care about Lancia so much if he were just...

No, that wasn't...

He couldn't think.

Everything felt wrong and he couldn't think past the ache in his chest and words are spilling from his lips like water.

"He only does that because I force him to," he replies quickly, panic sizzling in his veins. "He's only ever helped us because he doesn't have a better option available to him."

"Oh, _bullshit_. You know that isn't true! You can't make people…."

"Can't I?" He hissed, digging fingers into his legs, desperation making him frantic to end this conversation before he hurts him.

Because he's going to hurt him, _of course_ he is.

Its inevitable, it always has been.

He'll hurt him, rip him to pieces with all the things he shouldn't say. It'll be simple, so _simple_, so _satisfying_ to watch him cringe and flinch and ache and _break_.

After all, in the end, doesn't he always destroy everything he loves?

"How do you know? Do you think I tell you _everything_? I lie all the time, to _everyone_. Everyone, but myself most of all. How do you think I keep us _safe_? Keep us well? Keep us fed? What makes you think you're _special_? That you know everything there is to know about me just because you cling to me like you do? It makes me _sick_. You make me sick. You make him sick too. That's why I haven't taken you to see him, you know? He doesn't _want_ to see you. You almost got him killed because you have a _crush_ on him. He almost got himself killed because he'd rather _die_ than live without _you_. You both _disgust _me. All I've done to save you and you'd throw it away for… for _what_? Do you think you _love_ each other? Do you even know what that means? You've never been loved. Never been cared for by anyone but each other. That's not love, that's just _codependence_. It's _pathetic, _you're both_ pathetic_."

Ken's expression is blank. His face is always so expressive, so open, but now it's shuttered, closed, hidden away from him.

The taste of bile is thick in his mouth and he wants to stop, but he can't.

He _can__'__t_.

"Mukuro? Why... Why are you doing this?"

"Because we aren't _friends_. We aren't _family_. We aren't _anything_ but convenient allies. You're mine. You belong to me. You're just… just _property_. Tools to be used. Your lives belong to me. Mine to use and discard as I see fit and you'd do well to remember that. Don't make the mistake of thinking you _know_ me. Of thinking I _care_ for you. I do t. I _don't_. I don't care about either of you. Any of you. You're just convenient. I don't care about you anymore than you care about me. So don't pretend that this, any of this is more than what it is. You're not special and you're lucky I haven't alr-"

"You're a fucking liar, you know that?" Ken snapped, shoving to his feet and throwing a punch that Mukuro easily dodged, smirking at the attempt. "You're just fucking scared!"

He laughed and it felt good, cathartic. It was better like this. He was better like this. "Am I? What do I have to be scared of, Ken Joshima? You? Lancia Salvatore? Chikusa Kakimoto? You're all just pawns. Just toys. I can be _anything_, be _anyone_, go _anywhere_. There is no secret I can't uncover. No stone I can't overturn. I can make _anyone_, _anywhere_ do precisely as I wish. I can make daughters and sons kill their parents, parents kill their children, make lovers betray everything they profess to care about. I could make you do anything I wish. I could make you lose control. I could make you kill _him_, both of them, if I were so minded. It wouldn't even be _hard_."

"No, you…"

"Do you really want to test me, Ken? _Do you_?"

"No, I…"

"Good. Go to sleep."

"Mukuro, don't…!"

"I said, go to _sleep_," he snarled and he could see him fight it, struggle to keep his eyes open, to stay conscious, but in the end he dropped like a rock, tipping forward to fall boneless against him.

He caught him, more reflex than intention, his head landing awkwardly against his shoulder, his weight knocking the air from his lungs into a startled gasp and he had to switch realms to keep from falling back under the sudden pressure.

He was breathing raggedly as he cut his eyes to the girl peering out from under her blanket, clearly awakened by their argument. "And just what do you think you're looking at?"

Marie shrugged one shoulder, the blanket falling away as she sat up, "I'm just curious: exactly who do you think you're protecting by saying all that shit? Them or yourself?"

He chuckled, shaking his head wearily as he slid Ken back onto the bed, yanking his legs up and shoving him beneath his own blanket before standing, the sound of his spine cracking loud as a gunshot, he laughed a little harder at the way she flinched away from him, startled by the sound.

He was so tired.

So very tired.

"If I give you an extra ten thousand this month will you just shut up and leave it alone?"

She snorted, rolling her eyes before nestling warily back down beneath her blanket. "Done."

**-ooo-**

He's seated at the formal dining table, the wood gleaming beneath the bright sunlight streaming in through the big windows that had lined the room.

Matteo was seated at the other end, dressed in the same dark suit he'd been wearing that day. His hands tremble, tremors brought on more by age than nerves, as he slices into the roast before him and blood fills the plate, red and black, spilling over the edge to stain the white of the fancy white, embroidered tablecloth.

All the seats between them are filled with the faceless dead. Not nameless, he thinks, because if pressed he was certain he would still be able to name them all with no trouble at all. For now, however, they are inconsequential, just inconsistent blobs of color in fancy suits and dresses. Gnarled, decaying hands playing at life as they bang rusting silverware against empty, dusty plates.

The meal laid out on the table between them all is rotting. Flies buzz thick and black over every reeking, stinking bowl and platter, maggots curl and squirm in the carcasses of animals, fall across the tarnished silver. He has no plate of his own, he is ever the unwanted, uninvited guest and he belongs here no more than he has every belonged anywhere. His fingers rest, stained red with the blood of the dead against the tablecloth.

He wants to leave, but there's nowhere to go.

Every other time he looks across the table to meet his vacant gaze, Matteo's face it was desiccated, hollow, devastated by the delay of years.

"Why do you keep him?" Matteo asked finally as if they're continuing a conversation from long ago. His voice is a dry, dusty, empty echo and he shivers at the sound.

"What?" He heard himself ask, certain he'd never intended to speak as he pressed his hands- small, rough childish hands- flat against the white cloth, leaving more stains behind.

"My Lancia," the voice shivered like leaves in a chill breeze.

"He isn't yours any longer," he whispered, fingers bunching against the cloth, smearing the prints into something unrecognizable. "I keep him because he belongs to me."

"No, that's why you keep _them_."

"I don't…"

"We treated you as family. We would have kept you safe. We would have taken them in too. You lie to yourself and tell yourself that you did it for them, but that's not really true, is it? You just wanted to keep them. You were afraid they would leave if they had options."

His breath comes panicked and he wants to leave, wants to cover his ears, but his hands are stuck against the cloth and that voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, inescapable. "Afraid that they would leave and you would be alone once more. You were right, you know. They would have. They would have left you. They know you're dangerous. They didn't trust you then, they still don't."

"Shut up. You don't know anything about them," he murmured past the lump in his throat.

The words continue, falling in line as neat as the ants marching across the table, carrying away bits of meat and gristle. "You need them. They make you feel human. They don't need you. They've never needed you. You've just let them think they do."

And the worst thing is that he isn't sure if that's a lie or another ugly truth he'd buried.

**-ooo-**

"Lancia, I'm going to send you away for a while," Matteo Salvatore commented, settling down with a groan on the steps beside him.

"What?" He replied, surprised by both his sudden appearance and the words, his stomach dropping. It wasn't as if he hadn't been sent away on business before, but it had never been for anything more than a day or two. Just long enough to knock people back into line.

"We've decided to expand into America. Nothing too dramatic, we aren't trying to grow the family into something unwieldy, after all, but our contacts there have been a bit flakey lately so I've decided we need a small contingent there to help smooth the waters for our export business."

He frowned, "And you want me to go along as protection?"

He laughed, his eyes crinkling with amusement, "Oh, good God, no. I want you to head up the operation."

It felt a little like he'd just been punched in the gut, "You want me to what?"

The old man burst out laughing even harder than before and it was several minutes before he'd finally composed himself well enough to speak again.

"Oh, the look on your face, Lancia," he wiped tears from the corners of his eyes, still chuckling a little. "I'm sorry, I should have probably led with that, huh? You always assume I just think of you as nothing but muscle. That's my fault. You just always seemed so much more comfortable taking orders than giving them, but… I've seen the way you've been since we brought Mukuro in. Taking charge of his training, looking after him like you have… I think you're finally ready to take the lead."

Panic churns in his belly, this was… this wasn't supposed to happen.

"I've just-"

The Boss raised a hand to forestall his argument, dismissing it with a wave. "I know you didn't do any of that because you were looking for a promotion. That's why I'm giving it to you. This family will need a strong, even hand to guide it into the future once I'm gone and the others… they're good boys, but they're all too ambitious for their own good. It's my fault, of course, I've spoiled them terribly. My failing, I suppose, is that when I was a boy I had nothing and so I wished to give my family everything, but I suppose there is always an inherent danger in extremes. When you have everything handed to you, it is difficult to except anything less. It's unfortunate, but it is the way of the world. But you are different then my other boys. That's why I want you to take charge of this new project."

"Me? I'm… I'm no good at the business side of things, Boss," he managed with a strained laugh, running a nervous hand back through his hair. "You should probably find someone else to handle things."

He scoffed, patting Lancia's knee encouragingly, "I think you have more talent for it than you give yourself credit for, but if that's you're worry I already planned to send a few people along to advise you until you get the hang of it."

"But I-"

"I'm not gonna take no for an answer, kid. I'm getting old and it's well past time I began planning for the future of this family. And you can't become the head of this Famiglia without experience running some aspect of it. Everyone respects your physical strength, it's about time they learned to respect this as well." He reached out to tap his fingers against the side of Lancia's head with that same broad grin and he dug his fingernails against the concrete, heard it give beneath the pressure of borrowed strength.

"Head…? H-I can't be the head of-" he paused, turning his face away to grasp for composure. Let that bastard think he was overcome with emotion, let him think whatever he liked. It was all he could do to keep from losing his hold, from letting his control slip and just slaughtering the man on the spot.

"What about-" His voice was trembling, gruff with emotion, he had to… he couldn't lose it here. He had to hold it together. He had to just… find an argument that worked, that was all. He had to just… just figure this out. "Mukuro… I don't think he's ready to be on his own yet. He still doesn't get along with the oth-"

"Allow me to worry about the boy. He's not so weak that he needs you trailing after him wringing your hands and hoping he'll learn to play well with others."

"But he-"

His voice and his expression hardened, "He's stronger than you realize and quite capable of standing on his own."

Stop it.

"You can't choose the circumstances of your birth. Sometimes you're just dealt a bad hand, but you can always choose how you play it. That boy will do great things and so will you."

Shut up.

"I have done things I regret, there are many things I would do differently now, but I don't regret the life I have built for myself. Family can be a stone around your throat or a support to prop you up when you are weak."

Stop it.

"Sometimes you must let them go if you wish them to grow."

_Stop it._

"He relies on you, adores you, I can see that much just watching you two together."

_Shut up._

"As long as he has you by his side, he'll never want for company and he'll never see the use of relying on anyone else."

_SHUT UP!_

"I know it's difficult, but this is for the best. You'll understand one day, when this family belongs to you."

Right. That. He could use that. That was obvious, so obvious.

"I can't be… I mean, I'm not your-"

"My son? I've adopted you just like I adopted all the others so you've as much right to inherit as any of them. Blood is important, but the families are generally left to their own devices when it comes to the actual choosing. Besides, you've always been my son in every way that matters. You were an earnest boy and you've grown to become a good man, a _kind_ man. All Fathers should be kind. Some day this ring will sit on your finger and the hard calls will be yours to make, but it is my hope that you will always choose to be kind when you can. That's what I want for this family. That's why I wish to put this family's- our family's- fate in your hands."

"All I've ever wanted to be since the day you took me in was you," he whispers them, but they're Lancia's words. The words he would say if he'd allowed him this conversation.

He laughed, long and loud at that, a grin spread wide across his wrinkled face. "Don't be like me, Lancia. Be _better_," he clapped a hand down on his shoulder, big and warm as it had always been, but suddenly it seemed frail, the slightest tremble shivering against the fabric of his dress shirt as he used the grip to push to his feet. "Just be _yourself_, that is more than good enough."

"When?" He managed to force the question past his lips, glad it didn't sound as desperate as he felt.

"We'll start making the preparations in July. If all goes well, you'll be in New York by the end of August. We'll talk more about it once

He watched him go, hands tightening into fists against his knees.

He took the memory with him when he left, leaving Lancia sitting on those sun-warmed steps alone, convinced he'd dozed off for a short while. He wasn't sure why he took it, it would have been harmless enough, he knew he'd played his part well enough, but… there was something in his chest that hurt to hear all those plans for a life that would never be.

He'd already made his decision, his plans were already in place, and all that was left to do was to execute them.

It wouldn't matter if Lancia knew what his future might have been.

Wouldn't matter even one little bit.

It wouldn't change anything.

And yet… he still didn't want him to know.

Or maybe he just didn't want to know.

To know how quickly Lancia would have leapt at the chance.

How eager he would have been to leave.

How easy it would have been for him to abandon him.

It wouldn't really matter, of course.

It wouldn't change anything, but he still…

He still didn't want to know.

He fumbled the gun from the box in which he kept it, fingers closing hard around the comfort of the familiar grip.

They would all be dead soon anyway.

**-ooo-**

"You were talking in your sleep," Chikusa murmured, hand resting against his arm. Mukuro shivered and coughed, blinking slow, bleary eyes, gummy with sleep. He wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up in Chikusa's narrow hospital bed only that it was warm and he was cold.

He was always cold these days.

"Am I still here, Chikusa?" He asked, voice hoarse, his throat felt like he'd swallowed barbwire. "Am I still anywhere?"

Chikusa's gaze was dark and steady, "You're forgetting something important."

"What?"

He opened his mouth to answer and all that emerged was a cloud of dust and a flurry of grey moths, their wings ragged and tattered in the dim light cast down through the holes in the crumbling ceiling.

The infirmary was in ruins around him, the boy beside him long dead.

And so was he.

**-ooo-**

He awoke panting, choking back a scream, on the floor of the infirmary. His head ached, his tongue felt huge and swollen in his dry mouth, his palm and fingers slick with sweat where they clung to Chikusa's hand.

Where...?

Why…?

Hadn't he been with Ken just moments ago?

Or had that been another dream?

How long had passed?

How much was he missing?

_Pathetic._

He yanked his fingers away, pressing the sweaty digits against his t-shirt clad chest in a futile attempt to calm his rampaging heart.

How many days and nights had he woken like this? Clinging to him, to them, so desperately? He remembered vaguely saying things to Ken, cruel things. His dreams had been… bad and they were blending with memory until he wasn't sure which way was up.

Everything hurt, everything was getting worse.

Weak.

He was always so cold now. Like his body was switching on after so long lying dormant and half-dead around him and now it was over-compensating for all those years where everything had been simple and dull.

Before he'd have barely noticed that the floor carried a chill.

Now he was painfully, irrationally aware that the cold concrete under his butt was freezing even through three layers of clothing and a blanket.

He coughed, covering his mouth with the back of his sweaty hand as he struggled out of the blanket and climbed with painstaking slowness to his feet. He could feel the usual numbness in his butt and thighs from so long spent on the hard floor and winced at the pins and needles tingled and pinched in his nerves as his skin scrambled back to life. He moved to check the computer and the monitors for the dying patient in the far bed. The eye was infected, oozing and he wasn't sure what do for it. Some days he cared enough to try. Well, to make an _attempt_ at caring anyway, at correcting the damage he had wrought….

This wasn't one of those days.

His legs still felt strange and unsteady and the dream… memory that had shattered his rest still lingered, echoed in all the hollows of his mind.

Sitting at that table.

On those steps.

New York.

It always came back to New York.

Was that why he had chosen it? Because of some vague fragment of memory of the life Lancia might have lived? It seemed unlikely, but then he'd never been able to come up with a solid reason for the choice.

New York.

He'd made so many mistakes in that place, because of that place. So many poor decisions and overreactions and he had no one to blame but himself for any of it.

All those days spent hiding away in their apartment, trapping himself in another room, another cage, but then he'd always done that, hadn't he? Everywhere they went he made himself a prisoner. For their safety or for his own… the result had been the same.

Had getting trapped that afternoon been his control failing him or some twisted desire to punish himself even further?

That memory was never far from his thoughts, coloring his days and actions and temperament, had always lingered close to the surface, bubbling just beneath though never quite breaking open air, close enough always to scrap unseen against him, shifting the flow of his moods and causing ripples, panic, whenever he felt the reins of control slipping from his fingers. Looking back at those moments, reliving them now, made him feel rough and raw and restless, but it didn't have the same power over him as it once had. He'd spent too long turning them over and over in his mind, looking for the mistake, the flaw in his technique that had allowed such a thing to happen.

He'd spent months convincing himself that it was the loss of control that bothered him the most, that the rest was… incidental. That he didn't care about those things, that he didn't care about those fading memories, those other lives, because they were not him. That he didn't care about the feel of prickly, sticky hay clinging and itchy against his back or the taste of strangers on his lips or that it didn't bother him to think about the life where the only purely physical pleasure he'd ever experienced had come from murder and mayhem or how scared he was that he might be that way as well.

Or that, if anything, it had never been viewing, living, experiencing such things that had been what bothered him most; that it had been awakening from all that with his body a dull, throbbing mess of half-felt sensation. That the remnants of a pleasure he couldn't truly feel or understand had left him damp and sticky, cold and shivering, a stranger, unsettled and uncertain, in his own skin. That he hadn't been ready for that, probably never would be if the queasiness in his stomach were any indication. He hadn't liked how it made him feel, like the world was unsteady beneath his feet, had hated the way it made his skin so strangely sensitive and fragile.

In the moment, there had been only the shock of the event and the desire to be clear of it, to have those sensations washed away, to have the memory of feeling so helpless and powerless and out of control _gone_. All the rest had just been so much noise and nothing he could begin to process in any objective, meaningful way.

He had been Mukuro Rokudou, after all.

And Mukuro Rokudou not some quivering, frightened, aching child who fell apart because of something so _banal_ as _that_. So he'd shoved the memory down, down, down and away, the shock and the devastation and the ache of wanting, as deep as it might go, to be ignored and forgotten.

And it had been the wanting that had really been the very worst of it, he realized that now, two years later and two years older and still no wiser than he had ever been.

He was still only himself and the all that had truly changed in that time had been his ability to look at the scene without the offended pride that had clouded his mind at the time. There was still that desire to be normal and the fear of it too, because all those lives within him and the things they'd experienced had been both ordinary and extraordinary by equal measure. Pain and violence and pleasure and hate and love and kindness and cruelty and he knew all those things and none of them. He was made up of all those lives and none of them and in those moments when he'd been trapped and spinning out of control, lost within them, he had forgotten who and what he was now.

Forgotten all about his life.

Forgotten all about Ken and Chikusa and Lancia.

Forgotten all about being Mukuro Rokudou.

It had been as easy to slip into those memories, those lives, as it would have been to fit into a shoe that was just a smidge too small. Even though they hadn't fit quite right, never would, they'd fit well enough that it would have been a long while before he noticed the way they pinched and chafed at his edges, the way they wore him down.

They fit well enough that he had forgotten what it was _not_ to be them.

Forgot that their loves and pains and pleasures were not his own. And that… that was what he hated thinking about the most.

How much he'd _missed_ it when he'd woken up, sick and alone.

Not the… sex. That had been… not _that_, but the feeling of _connection _that had come with it.

How much he'd longed for that feeling of belonging to those lives, living those lives, because they were… _more_.

More than what he had been.

They had been able to feel things, to be… just _normal_ in a way he never would be. Even the horrible ones, even the ones that had died alone and suffering, even the most wretched of those lives had been rich and full in a way his life never would be. He'd never felt the difference between himself and them so acutely as he had in the aftermath sitting beneath the flow of water in that bathtub.

He would never love anyone or anything, wasn't sure he even could.

He would never be able to discover any of those feelings for himself having already lived them vicariously through so many others.

He could never be anything new, never have anything just for himself, untainted by all the rest.

There was nothing that belonged only to him.

That was just _his_.

And he wanted something like that with a desperation that frightened him.

And it was the one thing he could never have.

He had lain between Chikusa and Ken on that filthy bathroom floor after Ken had pulled him from the tub and he'd _hated_ them for all the things they would have that he never would.

Hated them so much that it hurt to even breathe the same air.

Hated that they would spend months and years discovering each other, treading ever closer until they finally broke through the surface of each other's worlds and fell together, slotting in to fill each other's empty spaces.

He didn't want them in that way, never would, but it still bothered him to think that there would be a time far too soon and never soon enough where he would have no place between them.

That there was nowhere in the world that he belonged but beside them and the same had never been true for them.

That, in the end, they could manage fine without him.

If he were honest it probably was why he'd left them behind when he'd infiltrated Cacciatore all those years ago. For fear that if they found a home there, he would no longer be needed, necessary.

It had been… easier somehow, in New York, to focus his attention on the other aspects. The idea that his body might be getting up to all sorts of mischief while he was unaware and that increasing and persist feeling of paranoia. He had spent weeks dwelling on it, flinching and twitching and feeling vaguely nauseous whenever he woke up, certain always in the first moments of waking that it had happened again.

That he would open his eyes and find himself somewhere else, possibly in bed with someone, living some other life, but it had never happened and he'd been relieved, but the nausea had always lingered, forcing him out of the apartment, which always felt stifling in those moments, onto the rickety metal of their fire escape.

He'd spent hours out there in the middle of night, both before and after that day, legs dangling over the edge, watching the lights and life of the city, enjoying the feel of the night air against his skin.

Sometimes Ken or Chikusa would join him out there, but more often than not he was alone with just that constant creeping sensation of being watched.

He didn't enjoy that feeling, but it had been such a constant in those days, whether he was in the apartment or out of it. Such an undeniable ever-present part of his days that he'd figured he might as well be out there breathing in the life of the city as cooped up within the walls of their apartment.

**-ooo-**

"I like New York," Ken commented flopping down beside him and causing the entire rusty structure to tremble and shake. The soles of his shoes were red and filthy. He was pretty sure he'd tracked half the dirt in the city across the floors. Ken had always been hopelessly careless when it came to such things.

"Well, that makes one of us," Mukuro laughed, his fingers caught in the latticework grating of the platform on which he sat. He hadn't told them he hated it here sometimes. That he wondered too often why they'd come. What was the point? They were here and they liked it well enough and it wasn't as if there was truly anywhere else he'd rather be. "You had to come all the way out here still covered in blood to tell me _that_? Go take a bath."

Ken wrinkled his nose, "I let Chikusa have the shower first. I'll get a bath later."

"You'd better or he'll make you sleep on the couch again."

"That's because he's a jerk," Ken sniffed irritably.

"Sure, because anyone reasonable would absolutely let you get blood all over the sheets for the privilege of getting to share a bed with you when you smell like a bloody, overused sweatsock. Clearly he's the jerk in this situation. Besides, by insisting, he's really doing you a favor, you know. Lancia would kill you."

"Lancia thinks I'm great, he wouldn't kill me."

"If he had to buy new sheets for your bed just because you refused to be bothered to take a bath and ended up getting blood all over them? He doesn't like _anyone_ that much. He would _have_ to kill you to serve as a warning to us not to do the same. Dead. Finished. Over. So long, old friend, and you'd have no one to blame but yourself."

Ken thought about this for a long moment, frowning, before making a slow reply. "Well… you wouldn't let him kill me."

Mukuro chuckled, throwing a tiny piece of rock he dug out of Ken's shoe at his cheek, "You reap what you sow, idiot. I can't protect you from your own stupidity."

"You're such an asshole," Ken grumbled, blowing a raspberry at him and swiping irritably at the place on his face where the rock had hit.

He sobered as a sort of companionable silence fell between them. The sounds of city below were distant, but audible… though they were no doubt louder and more pervasive for him. Cars honking, men and boys shouting back and forth to easy other, engines revving and birds squawking. There was music playing somewhere and he could catch snatches of it fading in and out, the tune both familiar and not in the way half-heard music often is.

It wasn't peaceful, not exactly, but it was close.

"You seem… happier today," Ken commented finally, startling him from his thoughts and bringing his attention back to the fire escape and the bloodstained boy at his side.

"Do I? I can't imagine why," he replied easily, opening his eyes and staring up into the cloudy evening sky.

The days were long and the nights short would probably seem so even as the summer faded info fall since he spent and would continue to spend most of those days alone.

When had he grown to crave their presence?

It had seemed so much easier to be without them when they were in prison, a relief, and here… here it was different.

Everything was different.

He was different.

He still wasn't certain if the change was a positive one.

"Like you're seriously a _lot_ less cranky than usual. You didn't even smack me for calling you an asshole. What's going on? Did you slaughter a bus full of nuns while we were out?"

"Why would slaughtering a bus full of _nuns_ make me happy? I'm not the devil, you know. And even if I were… they're _nuns_. What would be the point? They already spend all day in quiet contemplation anyway. It would make more sense to like, I don't know, send them to an orgy or something. _Nuns._ Seriously, Ken?"

"Beats me. I don't question your hobbies, I just support them."

Mukuro snorted, stretching, "Speaking of my hobbies… you should really be speaking English, you know."

"Ah, c'mon, you know I suck at it."

"You won't suck less if you don't practice," he slipped realms with a soft grunt of pain and flicked his fingers to draw Ken's attention as he pinned a real illusion chalkboard to the railing. "Read the first sentence."

"How now brown cow? That's… that's not even a sentence, is it? What am I asking the cow? That's just… I don't know, just a bunch of random words. Does that even make any sense?"

"Not really, but it amuses me," Mukuro replied, closing his eyes briefly. He created a phonemic chart on the board in place of the handful of sentences. "Read."

"Ah, come _on_, not the weird chart thing again."

"Yes, the weird chart thing _again_. The weird chart thing until you get better and stop pronouncing words like you're reading a dictionary while caught in a spin cycle."

"Chikusa only had to do the stupid chart once."

"Chikusa is extraordinary in many ways."

Ken groaned, rolling his eyes, "Come on, this is seriously like the five hundredth time you've made me do the chart."

"Yeah, well, you're very special too," Mukuro smirked, waggling his fingers at the board. "Begin."

"You just said something mean, didn't you? I don't need to know the stupid language to know you only smile like that when you're being a dick."

"Less whining, more reciting or you're going to be at it all night."

Chikusa slipped out the window onto the balcony with them, hair hanging limp and damp around his face, hat conspicuously absent.

Ken mouthed 'help me' at him in-between sounding out the symbols and words on the chart. Chikusa just shrugged and lay down beside Mukuro instead, long legs dangling off the edge of the platform. "He's never going to get it you know," Chikusa whispered and Mukuro chuckled.

"Oh, he's going to get it eventually even if I have to make him run through this shit in his _sleep_. Come hell or high water, he's going to _learn_ and he's going to _like it_."

"Pea, fly, tea, think, cheese… you guys know I can _hear_ you, right? You're both total fucking _dicks_… see, shall, car…"

"See? That was perfect. If he only put half as much effort into the regular words as he does the curse words he'd be better at speaking the language than both you and Lancia put together," Mukuro commented, tossing another pebble at Ken's face.

He caught it this time and threw it back, but Mukuro managed to slide out of the way so the rock ended up hitting Chikusa in the face instead… at which point the impromptu English lesson quickly devolved into a high-speed game of tag played out across a fire escape that squealed and rattled and whined in protest until Lancia shouted at them to 'knock it the fuck off before you break that damn thing, you fucking idiots, and get inside for dinner'.

**-ooo-**

"Mukuro?" Chikusa's voice was soft, hesitant and he glanced over at him, stumbling a little, off-balance, and catching himself with a hand against the wall.

What had he been…?

Right, New York.

He'd been thinking about New York.

The nurse who had occupied his bed was gone, leaving only nasty bedding behind that reeked of sickness.

Huh.

"Did I…" He trailed off, not sure if he wanted to ask the question or get an answer.

Things would be more difficult without a body.

He'd need to… do _something_.

Something….

There was blood all over the floor, splashed liberally across his stolen uniform.

He closed his eyes, opened them again and the blood was gone, but he was standing in a forest.

That forest.

The one outside Esterneo.

He'd been lost there, time and time again.

He could see the pond.

He'd drowned in that pond.

The sun's light had been so bright reflecting off the water, making his eyes tear up.

Problematic.

He closed his eyes, opened them again, felt a twinge of pain as he shifted between realms.

He hadn't meant to do that.

He was in the infirmary again….

No.

Still.

Maybe.

He wasn't sure, he wasn't… he wasn't….

"I should…" He trailed off again, not quite certain how he meant to finish that sentence.

What should he do?

How did he fix this?

What was there to fix?

What did he want?

What did he need?

Was this happening?

Was this now?

Was this then?

Did it matter?

If he was dreaming of the past then he should just do what he'd done and if this were the present he just needed to do… to do….

He blinked down at the clean tiles, glanced up at the man languishing in his hospital bed.

He'd removed the eye to stall the infection, dosed him with a course of antibiotics. He wasn't certain whether it would help or not, or if he even cared if it did, but it would keep him alive a while longer yet.

Huh.

It was funny, wasn't it?

For a moment there he'd thought he'd killed him. He wiped his sweaty palms against his thighs, grateful that the dampness was merely sweat rather than blood for once.

For once?

He remembered waking to find his feet bare and bloody, his nails caked with blood and flesh. He hadn't been able to stop scratching. There had been something beneath the surface, skittering beneath the skin and he'd needed to….

What was it that he needed to do?

The warden's office.

That's right. He'd meant to see… to go… there was something he needed to do there, _see_ there.

Something… important.

Something…

_Something…._

He stumbled to his feet.

He wasn't sure when he'd sat back down.

But he had to _go_.

He had to.

Go.

He thought he heard Chikusa call his name as pain crashed through his head and then there was only darkness.

**-ooo-**

There's a hole.

He was standing in a hole, knee deep in mud as rain poured down over him; rain so cold it made his teeth chatter, his muscles ache.

There was a dead body down there with him, propped up against the wall, listing to the side with the slow determination of gravity claiming its due.

He thought he could hear flies buzzing, feel their wings ticklish against his skin, tissue paper thin.

Of course _that_ was probably just his imagination. In reality there was only the rain and the warm night air against his skin.

He hummed to himself as he turned back to digging.

After all, this grave wasn't going to dig itself and she was already late to the dinner party that was meant to be her alibi. Not that she imagined she would need one, but it paid to be cautious.

She doubted prison life would suit her.

Too many eyes, too many toes.

Revolting.

**-ooo-**  
THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 122  
ELSEWHERE/NAMIMORI  
February 23, 2003

**TSUNAYOSHI**

He splashed into the icy water, gasping, each step taking him deeper even as his body wanted nothing more than to flee the biting cold.

Ankle-deep.

Knee-deep.

Hip-deep.

He was in it up to his chest, his breath coming in startled stops and starts, panicked by how terribly, awfully, shockingly cold the water was.

By the time his fingers, already numb and clumsy, closed on dark fabric, he was standing on his tiptoes in the thick, gooey mud, gasping and shivering, the water up to his armpits. "Hey! Can you hear me? Hello!" He called the words, but what came out was distorted garbage that stuttered into the air in a broken voice shoved through chattering teeth.

He had to bounce up, hoping up and down awkwardly on painfully numb toes as he grabbed and shoved at the boy's arm and chest trying to turn him over, to at least get his face out of the water. "Wake up!"

He'd managed to drag him back towards the shore a bit and shove him over onto his back when the boy came to sudden, flailing life and punched him right in the nose with one small, clammy, ice-cold fist.

He was pretty sure he shrieked, releasing his hold on the boy's shirt to slap a hand against his face. Which really just made his nose hurt that much worse.

"Ow, ow, ouch," he yelped, scrambling backwards out of smacking range. "Sorry! I'm sorry! I was just trying to help!"

The boy's flailing limbs had taken him briefly below the surface again before he broke through the rippling, icy water once again emerging closer to the shore. He stumbled towards dryer land, coughing and spitting water without even once bothering to so much as glance in his direction.

He really wasn't certain whether he even knew he was there at all as he watched make his way clumsily out of the pond, trailing behind him like goldfish poop.

He floundered a bit in the thick wall of cattails that bordered the pond on all sides, but he finally managed to press through them past them, his knees hitting muddy ground on the other side hard.

For a moment, Tsunayoshi almost forgot his own discomfort as he watched him bend almost double, gagging and choking as another coughing fit shook him.

"Um," he began hesitantly, taking a cautious step towards him only to find himself pinned in place by a sudden glare. The look was so furious that he was a little surprised it hadn't just killed him on the spot. "Sorry," he murmured, automatically, lifting his hands in surrender and realizing for the first time how small they were.

Small and covered in soggy plasters.

Well, that was… gross.

Soggy plasters and the tiny scars of a thousand different childhood missteps that stood out stark and white and ugly across the surface.

Why did even his _subconscious_ want to embarrass him?

"Are you okay?" He asked finally, wiping his hands against his damp, drooping pajama bottoms as if that might improve them in some way.

"Fine," the boy replied, looking away, clearly uncomfortable, thin arms wrapped tight around his stomach, damp clothes clinging.

They were nice clothes too.

They reminded him of the suits Reborn wore only bigger… though not _that_ much bigger since the kid was probably younger than Fuuta.

"Do you live near here?" He regrets asking the minute the question was out of his mouth as he saw tension stiffen his spine, his eyes widen with something that looked a little too much like fear for comfort.

So he did the sensible thing and panicked.

"Or not, I mean, this is fine. We can just stay here. It's, uh, nice here. There's water and, uh, trees and it's a_ little_ cold, but its not so bad. I could, um, try and start a fire or something, I guess," he glanced around frantically, hoping his brain would just conjure something up, but nothing happened and the boy was now staring at him as if he was certain he had brain damage or something. "I… okay, so I don't really know how to do that. Though maybe I do since this is a dream and in dreams you can do things you can't normally do… probably, I guess, I don't know. Um… let me just find some sticks and a couple of rocks or, um, something."

It probably said something significant that he couldn't even dream about himself as a capable, knowledgeable person.

"…I know how," his companion murmured; rubbing hands over his bare arms as he stood, back to looking pretty much anywhere but at him. He wasn't sure whether that was an improvement over the 'you're a moron' look or not.

"Oh! Great! That's great! What can I… um, can I help?"

He nodded, still not looking at him though he seemed a lot calmer then he'd been when he'd mentioned taking him home, which was probably a good thing.

Probably.

"Find some dry grass, some twigs… little ones."

He didn't really understand much about the process or why they needed a shoelace, but soon enough the tip of the stick they were twisting back and forth with the string began to glow a fierce red and the little pile of grass began to smoke. In a few quick, scrabbling moments the other boy had the beginnings of a small, weak fire going.

They huddled near the fragile blaze, sitting close enough to feel the heat against their hands as they took turns feeding in more twigs to help the fire grow into something a little warmer, a little more promising. The ground was cold and they were both still shivering, but it wasn't too bad.

The light cast strange shadows across their knees, longer and darker than he thought they should have been.

He scooted a little closer to the other boy, close enough that there was a rustle of fabric as their sleeves brushed. "Where'd you learn to do that?" He asked cautiously, he was a little scared to break the peaceful quiet that had fallen between them, but curious enough to try.

The boy shrugged, tipping his dark head forward to stare intently down into the flames as if it held the answer to his question, "Just something I picked up along the way, I suppose. You ask a lot of questions."

He didn't really talk like a kid.

It was a little creepy.

But then he was used to kids who seemed way older than their years.

"Sorry, just… sorry, you don't have to answer them if your don't want to."

"Good," the boy replied, scooting a little closer to the fire.

**-ooo-**

He woke with a start, sweaty and uncomfortable, legs numb and pinned in place. Panic rose fast and sharp and it was only months of living with Reborn, a notoriously light sleeper who tended to shoot first and ask questions never, that had him slapping both hands over his mouth in time to muffle the shriek that crawled up his throat.

Long moments passed, his heart beating loud in his head, before blind terror finally gave way enough for him to remember that he had been sharing his room with Fuuta.

Fuuta who had apparently crawled into bed with him at some point and was currently lying upside down across his legs muttering to himself in his sleep.

He'd offered to let him stay over after they'd gotten home from the snowball fight, freezing and wet, clothes soaked through.

It was funny, kind of, how whenever they stayed over the kids _always_ seemed to end up crawling into his bed.

Annoying too.

Lambo kicked and took up like three times as much space as he should.

Fuuta talked in his sleep pretty much constantly, an ever-present mumble of sound in what he thought was probably a dozen different languages.

I-pin did both and her kicks hurt a lot more.

He'd be glad when they grew out of this kind of stuff.

Kids… had he been dreaming about the kids again?

Probably, it seemed like he'd been dreaming about them a lot these days with all those weird dreams about crying and winter.

Whatever he'd been dreaming about was gone, any lingering fragments of it scattered by the rough awakening.

It was probably just as well, it wasn't like he really needed yet another reason to feel like a useless weirdo.

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: ?  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE

**MUKURO**

"Again," she commented from her chair, legs crossed neatly at the ankle, chin held in her hand as she leaned forward to watch him with cold eyes.

His head hurt, but he nodded and began again.

Skeleton first: envision each bone and how it should be placed, where it belonged and how it related and joined with the others.

Internal organs next: heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and all the other odd and ends that made up a living being.

Muscle and sinew after, red streaked with the white of fatty tissue.

Skin next, milk pale, thin, dyed faintly pink by the muscle beneath, veins a tracery of blue, bloating as they fill with blood.

Fur next: black as night covering all that pale, dotted with spots of white like a dozen tiny flowers blooming in the dark.

The lithe body begins to breathe as sweat springs to life across his brow and his head begins to throb in earnest. He can feel blood seeping from his nose, taste it flowing across his lips, as electric impulses that course through the brain, and finally push life into the heart that beats and drives the flow of blood.

Now a command… no, two:

_Live._

_Run._

The cat darts away, a streak of black against the dark green of the overgrown grass, speeding off towards the tree line. For a moment, just the briefest moment, he thinks this time… this time….

The blast of a shotgun and a spray of red, gloppy bits of muscle and brilliant shards of bone splattered across the grass.

The rage is red, blinding and he reaches out for his scattered creation, wisps of flame deteriorating in the wind, pulling them back together and extrapolating on the theme, making it bigger, stronger, a predator and then the leopard he's created leaps atop the hunter, ripping him open, ravaging the throat until the illusion breaks and the hunter vanishes.

The woman claps, once and then twice and he feels his cheeks flush. "Admirably done, Salvatore."

"Thank you, Miss Noemi."

"Do not thank you me, Salvatore. After all, that was no compliment, no cheap flattery, merely a statement of fact. Being talented is all well and good, but the only way to succeed as an illusionist is to be able to rapidly adapt to changing circumstances. In a duel with another of similar skill, that is what will save your life and grant you victory. You do not have to be the strongest to win, just the most clever."

**-ooo-**

It was her birthday and the hands on his hips had been gentle… or at least had seemed to be trying to be at any rate.

They'd been too eager for true gentleness, too rough and shaky with want to be anything like careful. Fingers dipped inside, sliding and petting and pressing slow and then fast and then slow again as he were trying to find what would best please her, but too impatient to really take the proper time to gauge her reactions.

She was aware of this and maybe even a little grateful for the attempt, but it was difficult to focus on anything past the itchy, irritating feel of straw poking and prodding at her back through the thin material of her dress. Sweat lay thick on their skin, sticking flesh together until every caress seemed awkward and forced. The barn was warm and humid enough that it felt like she could probably take a bite out of the air if she were so minded, so thick that even breathing was unpleasant and anything more than that was almost unbearable.

She wished she hadn't decided to do this at all.

Or that she'd picked a better spot for it.

Or that he had rather since he'd been the one to push her down into the hay when she'd said yes.

He was obviously frustrated by the lack of reaction as if there was something he expected from her that he wasn't getting, some test she was failing miserably at. She wanted to feel something, but while it wasn't exactly unpleasant, it wasn't what she wanted either.

She whimpered and moaned, even though she felt hollow and cold, but he didn't seem to notice. She shifted uncomfortably and he seemed to take that for encouragement, his movements growing more frantic as he pushed inside her and she felt something pinch, painful and brief, sore as he continued to move, relentless.

She thought of asking him to stop, but it didn't seem worth the trouble. She'd come this far after all.

She winced, biting her lip and staring up at the sturdy rafters high above them, at the little birds that made their home there flitting inside and out again, going about their day completely unperturbed by the people below.

He squeezed her breast and it was as uncomfortable as all the rest, but she allowed it, making a half-hearted noise that seemed to please him well enough.

She let him finish, grunting and muttering sweet words in her ear as she counted the ceiling beams overhead.

There were seventeen.

He came inside her, told her he loved her in a wreaked, guttural voice and she echoed the sentiment, but the words rang hollow as empty as she felt as he drew away, rolling over beside her to complain about the heat and the itchiness of the straw while she pulled her dress back down to cover herself and wondered idly what he'd done with her panties.

Did she love him?

Twenty minutes ago she would have said so, had said so, it was what had made her agree to this is the first place. But now… now she…

This wasn't how she'd imagined it at all.

But she still smiled when he propped himself up and asked if she wanted to get cleaned up and go into town.

If nothing else, she'd at least discovered that she wasn't bad at pretending.

**-ooo-**

The days have blurred together to the extent that is impossible to tell if he's waking or sleeping. The memories are coming so fast and constant that sometimes it's difficult to remember that he's Mukuro Rokudou at all. And he can feel all the walls he's built crumbling around him and he's tripping over memories that aren't his own, that never should have been, memories from those other lives, missing up with the memories from before.

Like dreams he can't wake from.

He finds himself picking up their habits.

Little things.

Smoking, chewing on his hair, cracking his knuckles, singing… so much singing… his head is full of music he doesn't know, melodies that feel as if they might swallow him whole. A dozen different little tics that come and go as they damn well. His kills are sometimes neat and sometimes sloppy. He spent hours clearing the blood off a cell floor one day. He still isn't sure what he did with the body. Everything is bad and getting worse and the way they look at him sometimes... like they know that any moment, any moment at all he might snap completely.

He's unsure if it's a dream or real, but it's scares him to see them frightened, unsettled by him.

It's no more than he deserves, at one time he'd even thought he wanted that, but... it's been a long, long time since he's wanted them to fear him, to keep their distance. Even in India, when he'd done his level best to push them away, he'd still...

But maybe it was better like this.

He wasn't safe. Not now. Not even for them.

It feels like he's sinking, drowning again and again, unable to escape.

He's not even sure he wants to anymore.

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 120  
THE GANG  
ITALY  
February 27, 2003

**TIMOTEO **

Some days were simply longer than others.

He popped another antacid tablet and crunched it between his teeth, staring down at the latest report, reflecting on how strange it was that some news traveled incredibly quickly while other news traveled glacially slow.

He flipped through the papers that CEDEF had sent over, frowning at the contents as much as the fact that it had taken over a month for CEDEF to ferret out the information and send it to him.

There'd been an infiltration at Traditore.

A man who had come seemingly for the express purpose of observing Mario Rossi had managed to infiltrate the prison for who knew how long and, even when he'd been discovered, he'd escaped without anyone even getting a decent look at him. According to the report, no one who'd seen him and lived to tell the tale could see to agree on what he'd actually looked like. He'd also been able to induce five guards to shoot each other on the way out the door all of which led to only one possible conclusion.

Lucia had been correct.

Alonzo Vinciguerra had survived the slaughter at the Esterneo compound.

He could already feel the migraine coming on at the very thought of it. After all, if the family head still lived so did the family itself. Many families could survive the death of a Boss, but no Famiglia had ever died while there was still a Boss or a prospective Boss still alive to nurture it.

He knew Alonzo Vinciguerra was an illusionist and he'd had his suspicions about Mario Rossi, no, Mukuro Rokudou's origins after he'd spoken with Lucia. She hadn't been willing to speak much of herself or most of the Famiglia, but about a few select members, Alonzo Vinciguerra included, she'd been happy to tell him more than enough to identify that man if he ever happened to run across him. She hadn't said he had a son, but then she'd seemed to have a rather strained relationship with the family long before the birth of her own son so it wouldn't be surprising that she would be unaware of it.

He read through the report again, but every aspect was almost purposefully vague and gave him very little real information other than what he'd been able to infer for himself.

It rankled.

The entire situation stank to high heaven.

From the execution order to this intruder and the fact that he had to have known who Mario Rossi was if he were willing to go to all the trouble of infiltrating Traditore in the first place.

If it were Alonzo Vinciguerra then he had to have someone on the inside feeding him information.

But that didn't make any sense either.

Why would he go to all that effort only to walk away empty-handed?

Why would he risk his ruse being discovered, waste all those years, just to catch a glimpse of the boy?

He picked up the phone and dialed Iemitsu's number, unsurprised when he answered on the first ring.

"Nono! Are you done being pissed at me?"

Timoteo chuckled in spite of himself. He'd always been a difficult man to dislike much less stay angry with. "I find that live my life in an almost constant state of irritation as it pertains to you, Iemitsu Sawada. I have news for you regarding the Esterneo situation."

"Oh? Is this about the stabbing? Because I already heard about the stabbing."

Timoteo startled, his fingers stilling against the open file, "What stabbing?"

"Oh, one of those Esterneo kids took a shiv in the gut about a month ago. My informant saw him poison his attacker on the way down with a needle. Pretty gruesome, right?"

"Which one?"

"Huh?"

"Which Esterneo kid was it?"

"Does it really matter whether it was Flotsam or Jetsam?"

He counted to ten slowly and silently and then repeated the mantra that had become a constant for him during the last few years.

It would be a poor decision to punch the leader of C.E.D.E.F in the throat.

No matter how much he deserves it.

Though, in moments like these, it was a decision he was able to abide by primarily because it was a physical impossibility with one of them in Italy and the other in England.

Which was really for the best.

This was, after all, the father of his successor and his friend. Even if he was the most casually callous man he'd ever known. "Yes, Iemitsu, it matters."

"It was a joke, Nono, a _joke_. Of course it matters. You're really no fun at all anymore," he sighed mournfully. "Anyway it was Kakimoto. I hear the surgery took hours, but he made it through so that's probably a good sign. Tough little bastards, those Esterneo kids, just unbelievable. Did you know that Joshima kid has a healing factor? A _healing _factor. It's like something out of a freaking comic book. Say what you want about those Esterneo bastards, but they were doing some _fantastically _weird science in that basement of theirs. So, if you weren't calling about the kid, what were you calling about?"

"That file you sent over about that infiltration of Traditore."

"Oh, that," he replied, clearly disappointed that it was something so comparatively mundane. "Yeah, what we have about it is pretty thin. Probably an illusionist, but I've had Basil digging up information on the Warden and it likes he _might_ have been auctioning the kid off so someone might have been coming around to check out the merchandise. I'll let you know if we find anything concrete."

"Please do," he frowned, flipping the file closed and pushing it aside. "Also, keep in mind as you look into this that there is a reasonable possibility that a survivor of the Esterneo massacre might be the culprit."

"Ooh ho, a lead. What do you know that I don't know, Nono? Does this have to do with your little sojourn to Vendicare a while back? Did you find out something juicy and forget to call me?"

"Now, Iemitsu, don't you think I would have mentioned if there was something I wanted you to know?"

"That sounds like a challenge, Nono."

"Feel free not to take it as one, I don't really need the headache of you poking around in things that don't concern you."

"Ah, but Nono, secrets are my business. You know I can't help pulling a thread when I see one sticking out."

"I know that you pulling threads often leads trouble to our doorstep. Why don't you stop while you're ahead?"

"Nah, this is exciting! I think I'm gonna head on down to Traditore and see if I can't have a word with that little scamp see if he has an idea who might be interested in him besides me."

"Iemitsu…."

"I'll take Basil, we'll make a weekend of it. Just got a couple things to wrap up here and we'll head on over."

"Iemitsu?"

"Yeah, Nono?"

"Please do not use this as an opportunity to harass those children or Lancia Salvatore just for kicks."

"Sorry, you're breaking up. I'm going through a tunnel. What was that you said about harassing people? Nono? This connection is terrible. I'll have to call you back later. Be sure to give Xanxus my love."

Timoteo scowled at the bleeping phone in his hand and hoped it hadn't made things even worse.

**-ooo-**  
**NOW**  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: ?  
THE GANG  
TRADITORE

**MUKURO**

"You smell like him, you know?" Ken's voice murmured in his ear, warm and close.

"Hm?" He managed, struggling up from the depths of sleep that still clung to him like tar, reluctant to release him.

Where…?

There were arms wrapped around him, a body tucked tight and too warm against his back. It wasn't completely unpleasant, but it made him feel… anxious. This wasn't right. They weren't… his thoughts were slow, dragging like molasses and he couldn't quite string one to the next. Something… he'd been somewhere else and now he was…

"Chikusa."

The touch, the breath against his neck were strange, unfamiliar, disconcerting and he took a breath to ask him to move back, move away even as he felt hands slipping low across his bare stomach, sliding beneath his shirt.

He tensed, exhaling a hiss of air sharp as a kettle whistle. "_What are you doing?_"

"You don't want this?" Ken's voice was low, insidious, as utterly unlike him as any sound he'd ever heard. He jerked against the vise-like grip of the arm that was sliding relentlessly down.

"No," he snapped immediately, struggling harder as sharp nails grazed the waist of his pants.

"Really? You're not jealous of them? Of their closeness? Their intimacy? You don't want to know what it feels like to be the focus of that attention? To be the center of their world? Isn't that why you're cruel? Isn't that why you hate them sometimes? Don't you want to _know_? Want to know how what it's like? To be held, to be wanted, to be touched, to _feel_?"

"Get off me," he snarled. "You don't know anything about me."

"That's not quite right though, is it? I know _everything_ about you. Everything you love, everything you _hate_. I know each and every thing you _fear_. I'll tear you apart piece by piece until there is nothing left if I have to. Because that's what you deserve. That's all you deserve. That's all you've _ever_ deserved. This is your life, all your lives, Mukuro Rokudou. All your fears and regrets. You wanted to know the truth of you, of what made you and here it is. All of it. May you _drown_ in it."

**-ooo-**

He was dreaming again… still.

Or remembering.

It was so difficult to tell anymore.

He wasn't sure why he even bothered to try.

It seemed like he'd been here a long time, tumbling, spinning from one memory to the next, stuck, unable to find his bearings, to even remember when he was or where he was supposed to be from one moment to the next. Brief moments of lucidity, surfacing for air just long enough to realize with a sickening, sinking feeling that he couldn't get a grip, couldn't escape the flow, had utterly lost his ability to anchor himself to reality.

He was in New York, body betraying him, finding momentary pleasure in memories that left him gross and strange and uncomfortable in the aftermath. His skin too tight and his head stuffed full of regret.

He was on the ship fighting through a violation that felt like barbed hooks pulling taunt beneath the surface of his brain, reeling him in like a fish on a line. Screaming, fighting, clawing and struggling and finally setting everything on fire, burning the house down around him to spite him. To keep them safe from him, because he'd rather be dead than a liability

He was standing in a child's bedroom...

No.

No more lies.

That was….

No more hiding.

He was standing in _his_ bedroom. It had always been his bedroom and his prison and it still was.

He had never left, could never leave, not really.

Even when he was dust he would still be in that room, cowering from all the things he feared.

He'd touched his fingers to those blocks and felt them slice through flesh to the soul beneath, felt the cold slippery slimy violation of another's unwanted presence. Heard his voice. Rejected him utterly and woken up without the faintest notion of what had happened.

He was dying in a pond, pressed beneath the water and unable to escape.

In his bed, on the flannel sheets of his childhood with his father's hands wrapped tight around his throat.

On the cold, unforgiving metal of the examination room table, his heart stopping again and again as he tried to scream and found his voice had deserted him.

He felt his own skin bubble and crisp beneath the heat of the boss' rage.

He bled and bled, child stillborn and gone ahead.

A pain in his chest and he died alone on a bench by the seaside as gulls cried overhead.

Death, again and again, so many different lives all his now even if they hadn't been originally. His pains, his pleasures, and there was no escaping them, no escaping himself either.

He was in India hiding in the dark of his room, trying to rebuild the connections he'd need to provide for them, to keep them safe and it all felt futile.

He was in a desert, warmth against his back and reaching out, reaching…

He was small again, running again, lost in the forest and too tired to keep going.

Small and hurt and sad and all alone in that dark, cold place again.

Snow kissed his cheeks and the back of his neck as he knelt in the mud, his fingers squishing and squelching in the muck. His knees burning with scraps and bruises from the mad dash through the forest and he was so cold, so terribly cold especially where the mud has crept into his socks and the cold, muddy slush had soaked into his pants. He felt sick and Papà's voice was still echoing all around him.

_Failure._

_Worthless._

_Disappointment._

He hated this place.

Hated it.

But he was so tired, so tired and cold and everything hurt and he just… just wanted to go _home_. Even if he hated it, it was still better than this. Running in circles, lost and alone and freezing in the dark.

Maybe it would be better if he just disappeared, if he could just sink down into the mud, let it swallow him up until there was nothing left. Maybe Papà would be happy if he were just… gone.

Maybe he would be too.

Maybe it would be a relief to just lie down and sleep, let the water the fill his lungs, choke him. Maybe that was what he deserved, maybe….

"It's not your fault," a voice whispered and he startled a little bit at the sound, at the soft voice that should have been his own and wasn't.

Was kind, soft in a way he'd never been and never known… certainly not then, not in the prison his father had built for him.

Then.

Right.

This was a memory. This wasn't… he wasn't… he wasn't this boy anymore. This scared child lost in his own despair.

He had been once, but not anymore.

He was something more now… something different, something worse.

Why was it so difficult to remember that? He could grasp the concept, but it seemed on the verge of slipping away again into the darkness of the abyss.

He wasn't this child and he was.

He wasn't here and he was.

His head felt fuzzy, musty, clogged and overflowing with a thousand different memories, jostling for attention.

He was….

He was….

"Not your fault," the voice commented again this time in bizarre, barely intelligible Italian.

Strange.

He'd been alone here.

He'd always been alone until….

This wasn't any part of this memory or even of any of those other lives that bleated for his attention at the edges of his consciousness. This voice was… a child's voice, soft and kind as nothing had been then and rarely was now. A child's voice and now a child's form, all muddy pajamas and small, rough hands, splashing down before him. Kneeling with him in the icy slush where moments before there had been nothing and no one.

Interloper.

Invader.

He stared hard at those hands, those small hands covered in scratches and plasters, reeking of ointment and a mother's touch.

They looked so terribly ordinary, so utterly benign, that he couldn't quite bring himself to look up, to see what nightmarish face had been paired with them. After all, there had to be a trick here, some fresh hell his mind had cooked up. Instead he just stared harder at the filthy, slushy mess in which they knelt and hoped if he ignored it that it would simply fade away.

These memories were proving to be full enough of monsters without his brain adding new horrors to the mix.

**-ooo-**  
THEN  
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 119  
ELSEWHERE/NAMIMORI  
February 28, 2003

**TSUNAYOSHI**

He _knew_ this had to be a dream.

After all, he definitely remembered going to sleep in his own bed. He remembered putting on the flannel pajamas he was wearing, which had been plenty warm for sleeping, but weren't really great for wandering around a snowy forest in the dead of winter. He even remembered pulling on the woolen socks that were now frozen and muddy around his numb, stumbling feet.

What he didn't remember was waking up in this place. One minute he'd been lying in bed trying not to think about the history test he was probably going to fail tomorrow or the training regime he was going to be given by Reborn as punishment for it and the next…

The next he'd been stumbling, shivering, through a snow-covered forest in his pajamas looking for… for… _something_.

He knew it had to be dream, but everything felt… kind of weirdly real. Not too real, because it was bitter cold and he'd been there for a while and he was pretty sure he'd be much worse off if he were _really_ stumbling around in the snow without gloves or shoes or a coat. He wasn't really sure how long it took to get frostbite, but it felt like he'd probably already lost a couple toes if this were real. He was cold and it kind of sucked, but it could have been worse. Mostly he was just eager to find…

Why couldn't he remember what he was looking for anyway?

He knew there was something that he needed to find, but try as he might he couldn't seem to remember what it was or why he needed to find it so badly. There was just this feeling, almost like panic, beating in time with his heart like he needed to hurry, because if he didn't hurry something bad was going to happen.

He shivered, folding his slim arms over his chest and exhaled sharply, his breath streaming out as white smoke as he quickened his pace. It was somewhere close by, he _knew_ it was; he could _feel_ it, if he could just… just….

_Oh._

"You," he whispered, his breath shuddering out as he stumbled to a stop, his heart in his throat. "I'm here for you."

He'd trudged around a particularly large tree and the boy had just been there, small and thin and soaking wet, kneeling in the middle of a big well-trodden slushy mud puddle, his dark hair hanging around his face like a veil. His clothes were dark and too light for the weather like he'd left in summer and stumbled into winter. His backpack was red, too bright and new like it had never been used before, stuffed full to bursting and streaked with mud and dyed dark with damp. His jeans and t-shirt were dripping wet and his pale skin was a wash of red and purple and pale, ice forming in his hair and across his shoulders as snow settled there.

He wasn't crying, at least Tsunayoshi didn't think he was, but there was still something terribly sad about him. He was mumbling to himself, words that sounded like gibberish, too fast and strange and the closer Tsunayoshi stepped the better he could hear it and the less sense it made until…

Papà.

It wasn't said exactly the same way it was in Japanese, but it was close enough that he could recognize it and what it meant. It wasn't like it was the first time he'd heard the word after all and once he realized where he'd heard it the rest of the words became more familiar… even if he still didn't really understand much of what he was actually saying.

Italian.

The boy was speaking Italian.

He'd heard Reborn speak it a few times, but mostly Reborn had always made a point of sticking to Japanese… probably for his benefit. Mainly what he'd heard of it had been caught in bits and pieces from Lambo and Dino and Bianchi and Fuuta, sometimes Gokudera.

The boy was still speaking, soft and panicked and obviously upset, sitting in the mud like he didn't notice the cold or didn't care about it. He didn't even seem to notice Tsunayoshi standing over him and he found himself wondering if the boy could even see him. If this was the sort of dream where he'd try to help and be completely ignored or not be able to touch or speak or reach the person he was trying to get to.

He'd had dreams like that about his Dad once or twice after he'd left that last time. Of him drowning, struggling, flailing and disappearing down beneath the surface of a pit of black, greasy oil. He remembered calling for him, trying to get to him, splashing around wildly in the muck, reaching and always failing. Failing miserably and sometimes even falling in and flailing about uselessly until he ended up drowning in the pit himself and, every now and again, he'd feel his father's hand around his ankle, yanking him down into the dark as the bitter taste of oil filled his mouth. Every time he'd wake up frantic, feeling around the bed like it would make some difference and when he finally realized it had just been a dream, he'd muffle his sobs and stupid, pointless tears against his pillow so Mom wouldn't hear.

The dreams had stopped after a while, but the feeling that Dad being gone was somehow his fault never really had.

"It's not your fault," he commented, the words tumbling out of his mouth in Japanese before he'd even considered what he was saying or why. The boy fell instantly silent, frozen unnaturally still by his interruption, but he still didn't look at him at all. "Um, sorry, right, Italian, um," he bit his lip trying to remember how you said that in Italian.

He strained to remember something, anything that might help, but he hadn't ever really paid much attention when the others were speaking Italian. There'd just never seemed much point. He wasn't any good at Japanese even and he was failing English miserably so Italian was probably way beyond him. He'd felt stupid even asking Gokudera or Fuuta or Dino what a particular word meant, forget about asking Reborn or Bianchi who'd both have probably looked at him like he was some sort of idiot… which wouldn't have been that different than usual really, but still. So, his understanding of Italian was limited to maybe half a dozen words and he wasn't confident in his ability to make anything even vaguely coherent out of them. Still, he couldn't just… just not try when the kid was obviously really upset and probably scared and he… he had to try at least.

"Non culpa," he offered, stumbling over the words and flushing hot with embarrassment at the knowledge that that wasn't even anything close to a sentence or even a coherent idea. He was so stupid. Why was he even trying? He sucked. He slumped to the ground in front of him in the cold, gross icy mud in which he knelt. "Non culpa," he repeated again, miserably before trying again in Japanese. "Whatever… whatever happened. It's not your fault."

The boy still didn't look at him at all, but he could tell by the way he was holding his breath that he'd heard him, that he knew he was there, even if he refused to look at him. He seemed a little scared. It was probably super weird having some foreign guy yabbering away at you.

"I'm not… I'm not going to hurt you," he volunteered feeling really lame even as the words slipped out. The boy probably didn't speak Japanese and, even if he did, that was just the sort of thing someone who was there to hurt him would probably say so it probably wasn't reassuring at all.

He was so bad at this.

Why was he even here? Why had he even bothered? Why had he thought he could…?

He felt really stupid.

It used to be really tough to even think about reaching out, trying to help people, because he'd been so certain of rejection. Now it was… _still_ really hard, but... sometimes, _sometimes_ it seemed like it was more important to try than it was to play it safe. He was getting a little better at it. At not letting his fear keep him from doing the things he thought he needed to, but he still couldn't seem to help always felt really embarrassed because he knew he was really, really bad at it.

He'd probably always feel this way.

He reached forward slowly, carefully, and he noticed his hands were small, tanned and scrapped, covered in bandages the way they'd often been when he was little. Back when Dad was still coming around, when he'd first begun to realize that he wasn't just a little clumsy, a little slower than the other kids, when he began to suspect that he was just… _less_. When his Dad had started really shoving him at sports and things in the desperate hope of finding _something_ he was good at and yanking him back out of them when he realized he had no talent for, well, _anything_ really.

Dad had been kind of a jerk.

"Dads just suck sometimes," he murmured, pressing his hands into the mud, touching his fingers against the back of the hands buried beneath the surface. He wasn't sure why he said it or whether it was his words or the touch of his hands that made the boy startle, made him inhale sharply and finally glance up at him with eyes that were so blue they almost seemed to glow in his pale, blotchy face. He was really young, but his eyes seemed… different. Weird. It sent a shiver up his spine, something between fear and uncertainty and excitement.

It was really… weird.

Whatever it was, he kept speaking, his voice shaking a little though he wasn't sure why, "Um, hey, uh, hi, I'm, um, it's gonna be okay."

"Y-y-you're not supposed to be here," the boy replied in quiet Japanese, his voice soft as the breeze that rustled the leaves in the trees and ruffled his hair. "I've never… I'm not… You don't belong here."

"Sorry," he replied, unsure what else to say. "I can, um, go? If you want?"

The boy looked down and away, the slightest lift of his shoulders the only indication he'd heard the offer. He wasn't really telling him to stay, but it wasn't asking him to go either. For lack of anything else to do, he slipped his hands deeper into the puddle so that he could find and grip the boy's hands in his. They're thin and cold and buried in the mud which was kind of gross and cold and squishy and the way the boy frowned didn't exactly fill him with confidence that it was the right thing to do, but he didn't jerk away from him so that was something at least.

His stomach squirmed, nervous and unsettled, "You don't belong here either," he said eventually, more to fill the uncomfortable silence than because he'd really thought it out. "This seems like a really bad place."

And it did. There was something about it, something besides the cold and the damp, that made it feel… bad, spoiled, like the whole place had gone rotten somehow.

"I-it is," the boy agreed, voice still soft, distracted. "I hate it here, but there's no where else to go. Just round and round and I always end up back here and I can't stop wondering if maybe I never left. Maybe I've always been here and everything else is j-just… what if I dreamed them up? What if they aren't real? What if it's just me? What if it's always been just me?"

There was a kind of soft horror in the boy's voice and Tsuna remembers all the times he wondered the same thing about Reborn, about every strange and improbable thing that had happened to him since Reborn had shown up at his door and bullied his way into his life.

"You're definitely not alone."

"What?" The boy asked, blinking up at him as if he'd forgotten he was there.

"I was alone for a really long time and then everything changed for me. Everything changed and I was… I had people I could count on, who were… important to me and a lot of times I think I'm gonna wake up and it's all going to be gone, that they'll realize I'm a loser and leave me behind, but… but I'm trying to believe in them and myself too. You should believe in your friends. I'm sure they're waiting for you."

"W-what do you know about it?"

"I know that you wouldn't be so worried about losing them if you didn't care about them. So you should believe they're there waiting for you to come back."

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

He laughed because it was probably true. He wasn't even sure why he'd said it except that it… it just _seemed _like that was how things were. And he realized even as he thought it that it sounded stupid and ridiculous and it was absolutely something he'd never, ever admit out loud. "Uh, yeah, but you still want to go home to them, right?"

"And what if I do? I don't even know the way anymore. I messed up," the boy admitted, flinching a little like the confession hurt. He was really small, they both were, but he seemed… older somehow. It was in his eyes and the way he talked. Like he was someone really different than he appeared to be. "I ruin everyone I touch."

The boy's fingers trembled, shifted and clutched at his own as if he expected Tsunayoshi would yank his hands away at any moment and he couldn't bear it. Somehow that simple movement quieted the unease he'd been feeling. Made it easier to stay, to grip his hands just as hard in return.

"It feels like I've been wandering for years and years and I've lost the script somewhere along the way," he confessed, gaze focused down and away. "Now and then are all mixed up and I can't even tell what's a dream and what's real anymore. Everything is so loud and I-I don't… don't… don't know why I'm telling you this." The boy shook his head sharply, his grip painfully tight as he raised his gaze, suddenly razor-sharp with intent. "Who _are _you? _Why_ are you _here_?"

"I'm…" He began, unsure how to finish. They were just… strangers and he wasn't sure why he was here, just that he wanted to… to _do_ something for him. "I want to help you," He finished lamely, feeling worse when the boy shot him a withering glare like he suspected he was slow or stupid or….

He was used to looks like that and maybe he had never stopped being bothered by them, but he'd learned to laugh them off at least.

Most of the time.

He wasn't sure why the nervous laugh that stumbled past his lips now felt so much like a sob.

So _stupid_.

"D-d-do I look like I want help?" The boy's voice was almost conversational and Tsunayoshi winced as nails dug into his palm, hard enough to probably draw blood.

"Y-yeah," Tsuna stuttered, the sudden pain startling honesty from him. "Yeah, you really do."

The boy laughed, sudden, like glass shattering, releasing his hands at the same time, almost casting them away as he stumbled to his feet, as if he couldn't move away fast enough. "Go to hell," he snarled, flinging mud at him that splattered across his face, his pajamas.

And that was when he lost his mind.

Or that's what it felt like anyway, because he'd never sought out a fight in his life without one of Reborn's bullets to nudge him along, but that mud splashed across his neck and chest and he _launched_ himself at the other boy, hitting him from behind hard enough that they both go tumbling, sprawling in the mud.

The boy snarls something that might be a curse and turns and then they're both scrambling at each other, trying to escape, trying to gain the upper hand, he isn't sure. He flails at him with tiny fists, kicking and punching, fingers catching in the long dark damp of his hair. The other boy is better than he is, meaner, and he fights dirty, biting and clawing and twisting around and around until Tsunayoshi ends up pinned to the ground, their hands locked together as the boy kneels on his chest, knees digging in, the painful weight of him making it difficult to breathe. He glares down at him, his blue eyes wide and bright, almost feverish, his grin triumphant.

He looks alive and focused and wild and _smug_.

_Found you._

Which is a stupid thought, but he can't help thinking that _this__…__ this_ is how he's supposed to be and all the panic and confusion was just something he'd gotten tangled up in for a while.

He doesn't even really mind that the mud is oozing down the back of his pajamas or that the water is freezing or that his hair feels thick and sticky and gross.

It was worth it.

And the smile on his lips feels weird and bright and so large that it seems like it might crack his face in half. "Guess you can't be that lost if I could find you."

"Maybe you're just really unlucky," the boy replied, releasing his hands with a rude scoffing noise and crawling backwards to sit beside him. He ran a hand back through his hair, wincing when it came away muddy and flicking more mud at Tsunayoshi's face as he sat back on his heels. "I'm not the sort of person people search for. I'm the sort of person people with any sense at all run away from."

"You don't seem so bad to me," Tsunayoshi laughed, sitting up and wiping the mud off his face though since his hands were plenty filthy too he probably just made it worse.

The boy scowled at him, "Are you stupid or do you just have no sense of self-preservation at all?"

Tsunayoshi felt his cheeks grow hot and wiggled his toes, cold and uncomfortable in his wet, slimy socks. "Both, probably," he murmured, running a hand back through his hair. "I really suck at this, huh?"

"You're not the only one," the boy commented and Tsunayoshi glanced up at him, startled, to find him studying the ground intently, his lips a tight line. "What is it you want? In return for this?"

"For what?" Tsunayoshi asked, a little confused. He hadn't really done anything much… and definitely not anything that deserved something in return.

"For helping me," he replied, voice flat and reluctant.

"Oh, um, did I…? Help you, I mean? Because I was thinking I probably owed you an apology for tackling you like that. I don't… I don't usually do stuff like that."

"It was reasonably effective," the boy replied, his words so at odds with his appearance that it made him smile again. "I'm not having such a difficult time remembering that this isn't... that I'm not…" He trailed off, looking down at his hands and breathing out a sigh. "It doesn't matter."

"Oh, um, okay, well, if you say so… I'm glad I could help, I guess."

"Why did you come here?"

"Oh, I…" Tsunayoshi frowned, voice dropping to a mumble, because it was _embarrassing_. He turned his gaze down to the mud, working his fingers back beneath the surface, fidgeting uncomfortably with it just for something to do. "I don't really know. I mean, I think I just came for you."

"That can't be right," the boy replied quickly and he could hear the frown in the voice. "I'm not the sort of person people search for. I'm the sort of person people with any sense at all run away from."

Tsunayoshi glanced back up, smile tugging at his lips at how serious the boy sounded when he said that. It was easy not to be mortified when someone took what you said so seriously. "Well, no one's ever accused me of having good sense. Besides, you don't seem scary to me," he commented, the words were out of his mouth before he'd even really considered them.

The boy glanced up at him, meeting his gaze, blue eyes wide with surprise. Something about that look made him feel embarrassed and he could feel his entire face heating as he looked away again, running a nervous hand through his hair and letting out a flustered squawk as he accidently slapped what felt like a bucket of mud down against the damp strands.

It dripped over his ears and down over his forehead as he wiped frantically at it in the hopes of keeping it out of his eyes, "Ah, c'mon, _gross_. _Why?_ Why do I do stuff like this? _Why?_"

Then there was a soft cough followed by another and another and he glanced up to find his shoulders shaking as he tried, half-heartedly, to muffle laughter against the back of his hand.

He snorted, glancing away again, a smile tugging at his lips as he wiped his muddy hand against his pajama pants, "Shut up."

His face felt like it was on fire as the boy finally broke, peals of laughter spilling from his lips to fill the air around them.

It was such a bright, brilliant, unexpected sound that he couldn't bring himself to care that it was at his expense. It was the sort of thing that was worth a little embarrassment.

"You're ridiculous," the boy commented finally, shaking his head, his smile fading along with the laughter.

He looked like he wanted to say more, but whatever it might have been was lost as a terrible rumbling, grinding sound erupted around them as the ground began to swell and shake, to buckle and crumble around them.

The snow, which had been falling lightly all along, fell thicker and heavier between them, blackening at the edges, more ash than snow, but cold and wet and sticky as it fell over them, plastering his already damp, muddy hair down against his head. The whole world seemed to darken around them, the air crackling with a sound like branches breaking. Above it all, soaring through the air and louder than all the rest, there was a man's voice speaking in careful, measured tones. Each word was like a gunshot and he hadn't even realized that he'd reached for him, that he'd caught his hand until the boy's fingers tightened painfully against his own, ragged nails cutting into his palm.

He edged closer to him until their knees were pressed together in the muck. He wasn't sure if the boy even noticed. He was too busy glancing around, nervous, edgy, looking as anxious as Tsunayoshi felt as he tried to keep his eyes on everything in every direction all at once.

It made Tsunayoshi's breath quicken, his heart race panicked in his chest as if there were some terrible danger that he didn't fully understand in those words, in the boy's shuttered expression.

He didn't understand the words, but he…

The voice called again a booming sound like thunder and panic had him using his grip on the boy to yank him up, forward, towards him. They crashed into each other, foreheads bumping painfully, but the pain helped him focus, helped him pull the boy with him as he struggled to his feet, splashing and slipping in the slick mud. "We need to get out of here. C'mon. Let's go!" He had to shout to be heard, but he didn't care.

"Go?" The boy called back, his gaze strange and clouded like he was only half there. He sounded very young again suddenly. "Where? He always finds me."

"Hey," he fell back down beside him and pressed his free hand against the boy's cheek, smearing it was mud and earning himself a half-hearted glare. "I'm not good for much, but I think I can probably manage running and hiding. What's your name?"

"…does it matter?" He muttered, distracted, as he glanced back towards the rustling trees as if he expected someone to burst out of them at any moment.

"Only if you don't want me calling you 'hey you'," Tsunayoshi replied with forced cheer.

The boy's lips quirked, not quite a smile, but close, though he still didn't look away from the trees. His voice when he spoke again was soft and reluctant, "Mario."

Somehow he didn't look like a Mario.

"Okay, Mario, I'm going to take you home. So, let's get out of here." He pushed himself back up out of the sucking, protesting mud and half-dragged the reluctant boy to his feet.

"Home? This _is_ my home," Mario murmured, his gaze darting to him and then glancing off to the side as he shook his head violently, gasping like he was surfacing from some deeper, darker place. He pressed a muddy hand to his head, leaving another dark smear across his pale face. "No, I… I'm not… I'm not…."

"You're not a kid anymore, right?" Again, that look of surprise, but there was no meanness in it this time. He just looked startled. Tsunayoshi smiled, scuffing his free hand through his wet floppy hair. It felt nice to surprise someone, to find the right answer before there was even really a question. To just _know_ something was true. "Me neither, I mean, this is just a dream, right? It's just… just the memory of something bad that happened a long time ago. You have somewhere else to go now, right? People who are waiting for you? You really shouldn't keep them waiting." He was still smiling as he tugged him forward again and found he came easily this time and they stumbled together into the forest on numb, frozen feet.

Deeper and deeper they went, muscles warming until stumbling gave way to walking and finally to running.

Running.

Running on and on through the deepening snow and the slushy mud beneath, dodging around trees and tripping over broken branches, pulling each other up and through over and over again. Through the shadowy forest as the snow blew thick and wet around them, away from the voice and the darkness that still felt like it was pursuing them with the indolence of an overconfident predator.

"I'll get you back to them," Tsunayoshi called back, feeling certain and confident in a way he never did in the waking world. "I promise I'll get you home."

"Y-Y-You're an idiot!" The boy protested, sounding frustrated and kind of flustered, but Tsunayoshi noticed that he wasn't trying to stop or pull away.

"I get that a lot!" He called back as they ran, as he moved through that overgrown forest with a fluidity and grace he'd never had, never would have, but he needed it now, because it felt like if he stopped, if he hesitated, even for a moment, they'd be caught and that would be the end. That Mario would be lost forever to whatever horrible thing was chasing along behind them and he didn't want that. He wanted him safe and whole… even if he was just a stranger.

Even if this was just a weird dream and nothing here meant anything.

He'd made a promise after all and he intended to keep it.

Faster and faster they sprinted through the dense overgrowth and across the uneven ground of the winter forest.

The snow fell more heavily with each passing moment, making it more and more difficult to see as if the world itself were turning against them. Soon enough he was moving almost completely on instinct, flinging them both full-tilt over fallen tree branches and across frozen streams where the ice cracked and shattered beneath his feet.

He ran fast and faster and he realized, as they moved, that at some point his companion had begun to match his pace, that he wasn't dragging him along anymore. That the boy was still gripping his hand so hard it hurt, but they were running together and it brought a huff of breathless laughter bursting from his lips into the air. He was scared, scared that the thing chasing them would catch them, scared that he'd screw up, that he'd lose his way or trip them up, he was scared of failing, but… but he was happy too.

Running like this with someone was… fun.

And the boy, Mario, was laughing too.

It was kind of an odd, breathless, chattering huff of sound like he didn't quite know how or didn't do it very often. It was weird… but it was kind of great too. He turned his head to smile at him and their eyes met through the flurry of snow between them just as they burst free of the forest and the ground disappeared, vanishing between one step and the next and they were over the edge of a cliff, flying out into the air beyond and falling down through a grey fog of snow and sleet and ice.

And as he fell, Tsunayoshi couldn't help but think that he should be terrified, even if this was just a dream, but he just… wasn't.

It should have been scary, really scary, but instead it just felt… kind of amazing. Like flying and fighting, like all those times Reborn had shot him with special bullets that drove him to act on barely realized desires. Amazing and the thrill of it shivered through his veins. And that was scary in a different way. There was a strange light feeling in his stomach and he was still laughing, still smiling as they fell.

The boy's hand was still cold and firm beneath his clutching fingers when pain snapped him awake, shattering the dream moments or hours or days or years later his chin and teeth ached fiercely where Lambo had kicked him and his eyes stung, cheeks damp with tears. He shoved up onto his elbows and glared down at the little cow that had somehow found his way past all Reborn's traps and explosives and into his bed for the fourth night in a row.

Lambo snuffled, grumbling, tiny foot kicking out again as he giggled in his sleep and mumbled something about candy.

It wasn't cute.

It _wasn__'__t_.

Tsunayoshi sighed, gently shoving Lambo aside and grabbing the spare pillow he'd started keeping under his bed for just such occasions, wedging it between them so Lambo wouldn't migrate into his space while he was gone. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but it was still better than nothing. Lambo snorted in his sleep and gave the pillow a good kick before mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like 'and now all the watermelon belongs to Lambo'.

He rolled his eyes, extracted himself from the bed and began the long, awkward journey over and around the trip wires and traps to the bathroom.

When he finally reached the bathroom he closed the door with a snap and stood there for long moments in the dark, his hand hovering over the switch as he stared at his darkened reflection in dim moonlight streaming in through the window. The idea of turning on the light made him weirdly nervous, like maybe he'd be able to see something in his reflection that hadn't been there when he went to bed.

Which was dumb, obviously.

It had only been a dream, after all.

That feeling of running, that strange surety that he knew exactly what he was doing, where he was going and how to get there, that he would succeed no matter what.

It hadn't been real.

He'd only ever felt like that in those brief moments after Reborn shot him, when he shed his usual insecure self like a snake shedding skin. When all his doubts fell away and there was only that certainty, that single-minded determination, that inescapable need to reach a goal and the confidence that he would be able to do it… no matter what obstacles stood in his way.

It was scary.

It had been so scary at first, but… at some point… he'd started to like it. To like that feeling of being so much… _more_ than he actually was. It was embarrassing, really embarrassing, but it… sometimes it felt really good too. Like he was someone else, some better version of himself that he could maybe be again if he could _just_… just get out of his own way.

And that dream had been like that, had felt good like that, only it had been him, all him. His own determination, his own confidence and certainty and desire to save him.

Him?

He remembered that cold, snowy forest. He remembered blue eyes and dark hair and a cold, muddy hand wrapped in his. A boy who wasn't a boy, who had called him an idiot and for once it hadn't felt like an insult. He remembered running and falling and laughing and loving every minute of it even though he'd been scared of being caught, even though every moment felt dangerous. It had felt so….

Sometimes he wondered what Reborn was turning him into.

More often he wondered if he'd been this person all along and it had just taken all that he'd experienced since Reborn had shown up in his life to start to see it.

He wasn't sure which would scare him more, but he knew that there were a lot of reasons he didn't want to be involved with the mafia and a lot of them had to do with the way these things made him feel.

He took a deep breath and clicked on the light.

His reflection looked just the same as it always had: awkward body, unruly hair and too big eyes. Nothing had changed, nothing was different or interesting or special: just the same old loser in flannel pajamas with a drying crust of drool on his cheek. He ran the tap and splashed cold water on his face, rubbing the evidence of drool away with the back of his hand, gaze dropping to the countertop as he huffed out a sigh.

He wasn't sure why he felt disappointed.

It had just been a dream.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected to change.


End file.
